PHASIANUS COLCH ICUS .
PHASIANUS COLCHICUS.
C O M M O N P H E A S A N T .
PHASIANUS COLGHICUS, Linn.Syst. Nit. .0766) t. il l » 27 0.—Gmel. S y s t . :0 788).t. i. p. 741.—Lath. Ind. Ornith. (1790) t. ii. p. 029.
—Mey. & Wolfi .Tasch. der Deuts. Vogelk. (1810) t. i. p. 291.—Temm. Man. d’Omith. (1820) t . ii. p. 453.—Vieill. Nouv. Diction. Hist. Nat.
(1817) t. xi. p. 2?.—Id. Faun. Fran.p. 247.—Cuv. Rig. Anim. (1827) t. i. p. 4'77.HLess. Trait. Ornith. (1831) p. 475, sp. 1.—Bonap.Com.
List (1838), p. 42. no. 285—Keyserl1. & Bias, die Wirbelt; (1840) p. xliy.—Schinz, Eur. Faun. (1840) t. i.p. 277.—Schleg. Rev. crit.
^ (1844) p. lxxiv.—Polyd. Roux, Om. Prov. plan. 262 '(m a le ), 263 (fem.).r—Gould, B. of Eur. pi. 247.:—Id. B. of Asia, pt. xxi. pi.—Blyth,
Cat. B. Mus. As. Sob. Beng. (1849) p. 246. no.'i.475.—Gray, List of Birds, Brit. Mus..(i844).p. 23.—Id. List Gall. (1867) p. 26.—Sclat.
Proc. Zoc&Soc. (1863) p. 116, sp. 1.—Powys, Ibis (i860), p. 237.—Dawkins, Ibis (1869), p. 358.—Bon. Comp. Rend. (1856) p. 879.—
Naum Vog. Deustch. ySl: vi. p. 127.—Yarr. Brit. Birds, vol. ii; p. 277.—Selby, Brit. Ornith. vol. i. p. 417.—Gray, Hand-1. Birds (1870),
' p.,257’ no. '9574;' ■:
H a s . Mingrelia, the ancient Colchis; Kezzil-a-Gatch, west o f river Ilia ; Asia (A it c h iso n ) . Caucasus (M il n e r ) . Lake of Apollonia,
near Broussa (V ig n e ) . Albania, Gulf b f - Salonica, Vhrakori in JS to lia ( P owys) .
No m em b e ro f the family Phasianidæ has been longer, or is more generally, known'than the oue whose portrait is here presented;
and of -none among all the species, hardly excepting those which have ' been lately discovered,’ have-w'e less knowledge of the mode
of life in a state of nature. Every preserve in England-and On thè Continent, in h ab ited a t all by-.Pheasants, contains this bird;
but it is difficult to meet with one-,which‘has not, at some time or. other, rèceivedan- infusion of foreign blood, and-consequently
presents evidences in its plumage of its ancestors having.-lived in the* vicinity of P . torquatus or P . versicolbr, which species have
also' been largely introduced into Europe. It is a matter òf regret that this hybridization should be permitted ; for it in 110 way
improves any of the species, and gives to us a race of mongrels, which,- at least to an ornithologist’s eye, is any thing but agreeable.
I hâve said that no species of: Pheasant has been longer'1 known than the p re sen t;-an d that I am not wrong in this assertion is
shown % the discovery of the following curious fact, which tells us that it ;has been an inhabitant of.England for oven eight hundred
years. Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins, in a letter to the Editor of ‘The Ibis,’ dated 20th April, 1869, says “ I t may interest your readers
to k n ow 'th a t the m o s t | a u |l |t record of the occurrence of the Pheasant in Great Britain is to be found in the tract ‘De
inventione Sanctæ Crucis nostræ in Monte Acuto e t de ductione ejusdem apud Waltham,’ edited from manuscripts in the British
Museum by Professor Stubbs, and published in 1861. The bill of fare drawn up by Harold for the Canon’s household of from
six to seven persons,, a.d . 1059, and preserved in a manuscript of the date of circa 1177, was as follows (p. 16) :— ‘Erant autem
tales pitantiæ unicuique canonico : a festo Sancti Michaelis usque ad caput- jejunii '[Ash Wednesday] aut xii merulæ, aut ii agauseæ
[Agace, a Magpie (?), Ducangé] aut ii perdices, aut unus phasianus, reliquis temporibus aut ancæ [Geese, Ducange] aut Gallmae.’
“ Now the point of this passage is that it shows that Phasianus colchicus had become naturalized in England before the Norman
invasion; and as the English and Danes were not the introducers qf strange animals in any well authenticated case, it offers fair
presumptive evidence that it was introduced by the Roman conquerors, who naturalized the Fallow Déer in Britain.” Tlie original
habitat of this Pheasant was said be near the river Phasis, in Colchis, where the Argonauts, when returning to Greece from their
expedition in search of the golden’fleece, found it in large numbers; and hence it has derived the name which it bears.
The Hon. T. L. Powys, in his article on the Birds observed in ¿the Ionian Islands,^says.of the common Pheasant that “ the only
localities in which I have myself seen Pheasants in these parts we re> -ohce on; the- Luro River, near Prevesa, in March 1857, on
which occasion I only saw one, 'th e bird having-never previously been met with in that part of the country;; and again, in December
o f the same year, ib the forests near the mouth of the river Drin, in Albania, where it is comparatively common, and where
several fell to our g u n s.f^ In this latter locality the Pheasant’ish a b ita t seems to be confined to a radius of from twenty to thirty
miles to the north, east, and south of the town of Alessio^-a district for the most, part densely wooded, and well watered, with
occasional tracts of cultivated ground,- Indian corn being apparently the principal produce and forming, with the berries of the
Privet (which abounds throughout Albania), the chief food o f the present species. We heard many more Pheasants than we saw,
as the woods were- thick and of great extent, our dogs wild, and we lost a -g re a t deals o f time in making circuits to cross or
avoid the numerous small but deep streams which intersect the country: in every direction. This species is particularly abundant
on the shores o f the Gulf of Salonica, about the mouth of the river Vardar ; and I have heen informed, on good authority, that
Pheasants are also to be found in the woods of Vhrakori in Ætolia, about midway between the Gulfs of Lepanto and Arta.”
The following account of the habits of this spècies is taken from Nàumann’s ‘Birds of Europe,’ translated by my friend H. E.
Dresser, Esq.
“ It is found thoroughly wild and in abundance in several parts of Bohemia, on the Danube, on the Rhine, and on the large
wooded islands in this river, on the pasture lands of the' Elbe, and in many fruitful and beautifiil parts of Germany—still, less in
the northern than in the southern part.
“ It is necessary to spread them in our part of the world by human assistance, as this bird is without desire to migrate, and