Within recent years the practice of bringing up Pheasants by hand has been extensively followed, and the numbers so reared vastly exceed those that are bred at large. The eggs are collected from birds that are either running wild or kept in a mew, and are placed under domestic Hens; but, though these prove most attentive foster-mothers, much additional care on the part of their keepers is needed to ensure the arrival at maturity of the poults; for, being necessarily crowded in a comparatively small space, they are subject to several diseases which often carry off a large proportion, to say nothing of the risk they run by not being provided with proper food, or by meeting an early death from various predatory animals attracted by the assemblage of so many helpless victims. As they advance in age the young Pheasants readily take to a wild life, and indeed can only be kept from wandering in every direction by being plentifully supplied with food, which has to be scattered for them in the coverts in which it is desired that they should stay. Of the proportion of Pheasants artificially bred that “come to the gun” when the shooting season arrives it is impossible to form any estimate, for it would seem to vary enormously, not only irregularly according to the weather, but regularly according to the district. In the eastern counties of England, and some other favourable localities, perhaps three-fourths of those that are hatched may be satisfactorily accounted for; but in many of the western counties, though they are the objects of equally unremitting or even greater care, it would seem that more than half of the number that live to grow their feathers disappear inexplicably before the coverts are beaten. The various effects of the modern system of Pheasant-breeding and Pheasant-shooting need here be treated but briefly. It is commonly condemned as giving encouragement to poaching, and, especially under ignorant management, as substituting slaughter for sport. Undoubtedly there is much to be said, on this score; but in reply to the first objection it has been urged that as a rule the poacher does not like visiting coverts that he knows to be effectively preserved, and that coverts containing a great stock of Pheasants, whose rearing has cost a considerable sum of money, are probably the most effectively preserved. As to the second objection it is to be observed that what constitutes sport is in great measure a matter of individual taste, and that the reasonable limit of a sportsman’s “bag” is practically an unknown quantity. One man likes shooting a Pheasant rising at his feet or sprung by his spaniels, as it flies away from him through the trees and is still labouring to attain its full speed; another prefers shooting one that has mounted to its greatest height, and, assisted perhaps by the wind, is traversing the sky at a pace that almost passes calculation. If skill has to be considered in the definition of sport there can be no doubt as to which of these cases most requires it. In regard to cruelty—that is, the proportion of birds wounded to those killed—there seems to be little difference, for the temptation to take “long shots” is about equal in either case. The Pheasant whose wing is broken by the charge, if at a great height, is often killed outright by the fall, whereas, if nearer the ground, it will often make good its escape by running, possibly to recover, or more possibly to die after lingering in pain for a longer or shorter time. On the other hand, high-flying Pheasants, having their vital parts more exposed, are often hit in the body, but not hard enough to bring them down, though the wound they have received proves mortal, and the velocity at which they are travelling takes them beyond reach of retrieval.

Formerly Pheasants were taken in snares or nets, and by hawking but the crossbow was also used, and the better to obtain a “sitting shot,” for with that weapon men had not learnt to “shoot flying” · dogs appear to have been employed in the way indicated by the lines under an engraving by Hollar, who died in 1677 :—

“The Feasant Cocke the woods doth most frequent, Where Spaniells spring and pearche him by the sent.”

The use of firearms has put an end to the older practices, and the gun is now the only mode of taking Pheasants recognized as legitimate.

Of the many other species of the genus Phasianus, two only can be dwelt upon here. These are the Ring-necked Pheasant of China, P. torquatus, easily known by the broad white collar, whence it has its name, as well as by the pale greyish-blue of its upper wing-coverts and the light buff of its flanks, and the P. versicolor of Japan, often called the Green Pheasant from the beautiful tinge of that colour that in certain lights pervades almost the whole of its plumage, and, deepening into dark emerald, occupies all the breast and lower surface that in the common and Chinese birds is bay barred with glossy black scallops. Both of these species have been to a considerable extent introduced into England, and cross freely with P. colchicus, while the hybrids of each with the older inhabitants of the woods are not only perfectly fertile inter se, but cross as freely with the other hybrids, so that birds are frequently found in which the blood of the three species is mingled. The hybrids of the first cross are generally larger than either of their parents, but the superiority of size does not seem to be maintained by their descendants. White and pied varieties of the common Pheasant, as of most birds, often occur, and with a little care a race or breed of each can be perpetuated. A much rarer variety is sometimes seen; this is known as the Bohemian Pheasant, not that there is the least reason to suppose it has any right to such an epithet, for it appears, as it were, accidentally among a stock of the pure P. colchicus, and offers an example analogous to that of the japanned Peafowl already noticed (Peacock, supra, p. 443), being, like that breed, capable of perpetuation by selection. To a small extent two other species of Pheasant have been introduced to the coverts of England—P. reevesi from China, remarkable for its very long tail, white with black bars, and the Copper Pheasant, P. saemmerrüngi, from Japan. The well-known Gold and Silver Pheasants, P. pictus and P. uycthemerus, each the type of a distinct section or subgenus, are both from China and have long been introduced into Europe, but are only fitted for the aviary. To the former is allied the still more beautiful P. amherstiae and to the latter about a dozen more species, most of them known to Indian sportsmen by the general name of “Kaleege.” The comparatively plain Pueras Pheasants, Pucrasia, the magnificent Monauls, Lophophorus, and the fine Snow-Pheasants, Crossoptilum— of each of which genera there are several species—must, for want of space, be only mentioned here. All the species known at the time are beautifully figured from drawings by Mr Wolf in Mr Elliot’s grand Monograph of the Phasianidae (2 vols., fol., 1870-72)—the last term being used in a somewhat general sense. With a more precise scope Mr Tegetmeier’s Pheasants: their Natural History and Practical Management (4to, ed. 2, 1881) is to be commended as a very useful work. (a. n.)