THE PHEASANT OF THE FUTURE.
THE pheasant has been so long the principal person in our coverts that it does not seem "quite nice," it hardly even seems "quite right," to interfere with him in any way. It has always sounded rather quaintly, to those who were informed of the pheasant's genealogy, to hear the com- plaints which were at one time common of the degeneracy caused in the stock of the "old English pheasant" by the introduction of the bird with the white collar round his neck, torquatus, from China. To such a pitch of loyalty and jealousy for our "old English pheasant" had we come that we used to wax indignant when we saw too large a percentage of the white-collared birds. As a matter of fact, the per- centage of those without the white collar has now become very small indeed. It is quite a rare thing to see such a bird as the old dark-necked fellow. Yet, after all, it is only by adoption that we can make any claim upon him as an English citizen. Phasianus is his family name, with the more particular designation for himself as Colchicus; and Phasianus we must suppose to indicate a gentleman from the banks of the Phasis, and Colchicus as a more narrowly local addition indicating, possibly incorrectly, that he hails from Colchis. At all events, be is distinctly an Eastern bird. We in the West may adopt him, so that we become actually very jealous of any disturbance of his acquired rights, but we have to recognise that he is decidedly Oriental in his manners, —a sultan of many wives. We may adopt him, but his some- what shocking habits are hardly those of our native avine kinds, if we may except the black-game. He is no better than Chanticleer of the farmyard, who is also an Oriental person in his origin. It is only fair to say, however, that Mr. Ogilvie Grant, who has made a special study of the game-birds, is disposed to think that this polygamous habit of the pheasant may have been acquired in what he calls a state of semi- domestication, for be writes :—" In a really wild state all the evidence, though it is certainly somewhat scanty, tends to show that this, as well as the other species of Phasianus, are monogamous, the cock bird remaining with the female during the period of incubation, and taking part in the duties of protecting and rearing the young." In its modern habits, in this country, even the mother pheasant is but an indifferent parent, and not nearly so careful as the partridge mother of her eggs and young brood.
The date of the introduction of our so-called old English pheasant into Great Britain is lost in the prehistoric mists. Some attribute it to the Romans ; but it is said that the bird appears on the menus of Saxon Kings, if that goes for anything. Colchicus, at any rate, is by far the longest established of his family, but his race is no longer pure, being much crossed with torquatus. Still, we could call him "the pheasant," and take a pride in him ; the departure from the old pure type was not very marked. But now we are threatened with a new species of pheasant, or at least a cross with a new species, which is so unlike the old type which we have adopted so long as to feel it to be a compatriot, that we shall hardly know what to call it. "Pheasant" will not suggest the new creature at all. We shall have to call it the Mongolian pheasant, or a Mongolian hybrid, as the case may be, and, eo calling it, confess at once that the chief person of our coverts is quite different from what he used to be. There is not the slightest doubt that most people who know both kinds will say that the new one is the better of the two. Insomuch as the difference between the new type and the old will be greater than the difference between torqualus and Colchicus, we shall sentimentally resent the latter change more than the former; but insomuch as the advantages which Mon golicus, even in his crosses, seems to have over the type which is still the common one in our coverts are much more decided than any very doubtful advantage that Colchicus may have had in comparison with the type preceding him, we are hound practically to accept the change with satisfaction. The Mongolian and the half-bred Mongolian are better birds than either the old Colchicus or torquatus, or than the prevailing crosses between them. In appearance the Mongolian (and he carries much of his own characteristics into his crosses) is a fine upstanding bird, bigger and heavier than our now common pheasant, wearing a very broad white collar about his neck ; and for the rest, according to Mr. Ogilvie Grant again, "the mantle, cheat, and breast are bronzy orange-red glossed with purple carmine in one light and green in the other; the rump is dark maroon, strongly glossed with green, shading into purple ; the throat is purplish bronzy red ; the breast and flank feathers are tipped with very dark green; and the middle of the breast and sides of the belly are dark green." Evidently this is a bird that has no need to be ashamed of his costume ; its description reads like an account in words of one of Turner's sunsets. Added to all this, the Mongolian pheasant has a very widely open and bold eye, which is a striking feature even where so many colours are striking. He is a bird well adapted for all that the shooter requires of him,—as strong, as fast, and as high a flier as our old familiar friend, an excellent bird for the table, not only as to the quality of his flesh, but also as to the important point that there is more of it,—he is, as we have said, a bigger bird. For the purposes of the keeper, the new bird— that is to say, the hybrid between our old pheasant, itself generally a cross between Colchicus and torquatus, and. the pure Mongolicus—has several advantages. It is a very healthy and hardy bird, and will thrive in conditions which would be almost inevitably fatal to a large proportion of the common pheasant poults. Of late years, in consequence, no doubt, of the overstocking of the ground, rearing birds in too close proximity to each other, and in some cases rearing too soon again on ground already used for that purpose, a very serious epidemic has been rife among pheasants. It seemed to reach what we may well hope to have been its height last year, for in the present season it does not appear to have been nearly so prevalent, and there is reason to think that keepers and the rearers of pheasants have been taught a useful lesson by it, both in the direction of such details as the necessity of dis- infecting coops and utensils used by the pheasants, and also in the yet more important general principle of not overcrowding the birds on the ground, and of constantly using fresh ground for their rearing. But even in the midst of the epidemic the Mongolians, both the pure- bred and the half-breeds, have flourished with a singular immunity. We have seen letters from keepers asserting that they had reared Mongolians with success on ground which had been fouled by rearing pheasants on it the very year before, and that the birds had taken no harm. The rate of growth of the young poults is very rapid. In fact, in every respect this promises to be a species (or a variety) which will face the struggle for life with a better chance of success than any other variety we have yet seen in our coverts, and requires less care and fostering at the keeper's hands. Unless further experience proves it to have some defects which so far have not been revealed, it is difficult not to believe that the general type of our pheasants will be changed in the future in the direction of a cross —probably a half-cross, for that is the strain which seems to find the greatest favour—with the pheasant which is called liongolicus.
We have seen very many previous attempts to improve the principal bird of our coverts, but until this last experiment none of the changes have proved to be for the better. We have had birds which were more beautiful and more gorgeous
even than our own gay bird : the pheasants are a gay family. We have had Amherst, Reeve's, golden, Prince of Wales, and many more : there is hardly one of the large family which has not been given a trial. Until now, the only real success of the kind has been with the Japanese pheasant. ' It has been claimed for tl.a crosses between them and the type common in our coverts that they were quicker in starting to fly and were willing to fly higher than our own birds ; but they never made their claims good or widely recognised. They fulfilled, perhaps, some of the requirements of the best possible birds; but they did not fulfil them all, or enough of them, as the Mongolian crosses really do look as if they would fulfil them. Most of the more beautiful kinds, such as the Argus and the golden, were not really high flyers. Many of them were more difficult to rear than the common pheasants : most of them were smaller and inferior as table birds. The Mongolian seems to combine all the essential qualities which we want. Perhaps the strongest evidence that we can find of the true merits of the bird is not so much the direct as the indirect witness borne by very nearly all the keepers who have tried it. The fact that a very. large majority of a class so conservative, so averse to any new thing, are ready to introduce this stranger, and to welcome him, is even more significant than all the testimonials which they may give him. Unless the new thing was very good indeed, its novelty would discount all its superior merits in the estimate of nine- tenths of the keeper class. That nine-tenths of that class should, on the contrary, be proclaiming and practically bearing witness to the excellences of the new bird is the strongest ground for the presumption that it will become the typical British pheasant of the future.
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