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PHEASANT. 
COMMON PHEASANT. RING-NECKED PHEASANT. 
Phasianus Colchicus, Linnzvus. LATHAM. 
Phasianus—A Pheasant. Colchicus—Of Colchis. 
In treating of the game birds, I foresee that it will be 
difficult to confine myself strictly to their natural history. 
When one comes to think, to speak, or to write of the ‘flood 
and field, I ask any reader who has handled, though it may 
have been in days gone by, ‘the rod and the gun,’ whether 
nature and art are not here so closely connected together, that 
their confines are easily overstepped, and in fact one will be 
out of bounds, trespassing perhaps, before he knows or thinks 
where he is. I believe, indeed, that the old common law of 
England gives you leave and license to follow your game when 
struck, but I must not forget that I am now holding 
the pen and no other implement, and must guide, and not 
be guided by, the ‘grey goose wing.’ I will only say that, 
as a magistrate for the Hast Riding of Yorkshire, I have always 
felt that a poacher, if not a really bad character, was not 
necessarily a being so utterly depraved, as to be deserving of 
nothing but to be prosecuted with the ‘utmost rigour of the 
law.’ 
The Pheasant, though not strictly speaking one of our native 
birds, having been introduced formerly—it is supposed, as 
imported by its names, from the banks of the River Phasis, 
in Colchis, in Asia—yet, as now and long since naturalized 
among us, claims and receives a place accordingly in every 
natural history. 
This splendid bird is plentiful in a great part of Hurope— 
the north excepted, and in Asia, from the shores of the Black 
Sea to Tartary, Persia, the East Indies, China, and its northern 
region, the formerly famous and marvellous Cathay. It is 

