12 
PHEASANT RAISING IN THE UNITED STATES. 
The pheasant was doubtless reared in English preserves from the 
time of its introduction, but the earliest actual evidence of its propa¬ 
gation is the record of the employment of a pheasant breeder for 
Henry VIII in 1502. At the present day the number propagated 
in confinement in England greatly exceeds the number breeding 
there in a wild or semiwild state. The comparatively recent intro¬ 
duction into Great Britain of the German custom of pheasant driving, 
which consists of shooting pheasants driven, by beaters over the 
shooters, or ‘guns/ has given great impetus to pheasant raising 
Fig. 11.—Versicolor pheasant (Phasianus versicolor). (From photograph of specimen in the U. S. National 
Museum mounted by Nelson R. Wood.) 
during the past century, and the pheasant preserve is now a common 
adjunct of the English estate. 
This stock, however, is nearly all of mixed blood. A little more 
than a hundred years ago the ringneck pheasant {Phasianus torquatus) 
was introduced into England and crossed with the English pheasant, 
then the only pheasant in British coverts. And about the middle 
of the last century the Japanese versicolor pheasant ( Phasianus 
versicolor , fig. 11) was introduced for crossing with the hybrid Eng¬ 
lish ringneck. Both species interbreed freely with the English 
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