The West Chinese pheasant differs from the ring-necked Chinese bird by the absence of a ring of white; its scientific name is Ph. decollatus.
The ring-necked pheasant, or Ph. torquatus, was introduced from China to St. Helena about 1513 A.D. In England its first introduction is unrecorded, but it exists here no longer in a pure state. It is flourishing in New Zealand, and also in America. In some of the States, including Oregon, it has bred so largely as to be a positive nuisance to agriculture.
Two more pheasants, only slightly differing from the ring-necked bird of China, are Ph. formosanus and Ph. satchennensis.
The Japanese pheasant, or Ph. versicolor, is a beautiful bird with a dark-green breast. It was introduced by Lord Derby in 1840, and although the early crosses were no doubt large and beautiful, in the natural course of things, when colours came to blend, as they do not at first, a mongrel coloration would have been certain had not the crossing been so limited as to make no difference.
Of these 17 true type pheasants it is usual only to take account of the cocks. In the above not a word has been said of the equally important hens, that are practically all alike, which is additional proof that these are not species, and are only local varieties, breeding a little less true to colour than the varieties of fancy pigeons and fancy fowls.
The golden pheasant is not of the same genus as those above, but is closely allied to Lady Amherst’s pheasant. The former does not do for a covert bird, because it kills the much bigger common pheasant. The silver pheasant belongs to another genus, and also is barred from the coverts in consequence of its greater superiority in fight than in flight.
PHEASANTS
It is not certain whether pheasants are indigenous to this country. It is known that they were cultivated by the Romans as domesticated, or semi-domesticated birds, and as remains of pheasants have been found in towns or camps of the Romans in Britain, it is assumed that those people introduced the birds into Britain. It will be observed that the idea rests upon the fact that the pheasants were not indigenous to Italy. But Italy is to Europe what India is to Asia, the most southerly country, and pheasants do not like low latitudes. The races of pheasant most allied to our own cross bred are found from Asia Minor right across the Continent to Japan, and it is quite possible that the Western race extended across Central Europe to England. Obviously a strip of ocean is no bar in Asia, and it is not likely to have been so in Europe, especially as it is said that once the ocean did not flow between Britain and the Continent. The first feast of English pheasants mentioned in history occurred in the time of King Harold. The old English pheasant, as we must call the bird which preceded by 1000 or 2000 or as many million years the introduction of the Chinese race into England, was a red bird upon the back and the upper tail coverts, and it had no white ring round its neck. The Chinese pheasant, on the other hand, had the band of white and greenish colouring on the back and upper tail coverts, and what we have done by mixing green and red together is precisely what an artist does with those two colours. He produces some shade of neutral tint. Consequently, our cock pheasants are only handsome from coloration in regard to the necks and heads and the breasts, which the crossing has not damaged. The present desire to cross with birds that have white wing coverts, namely the Mongolian race, is liable to mix colours very much more. However beautiful a pure white may be and is, it has a very bad effect on the colours of fowls and ducks. White crossing has produced barndoor fowls of every hideous mixture, and the farm-pond duck with its washed-out feathering, which when compared with that of the Rouen and the wild duck suffers by the contrast. The Prince of Wales pheasant, the Mongolian, and even the Japanese versicolor pheasants, are handsome birds, and may be desirable as pure races, but any intermixtures of blood can only take place with the risk of spoiling the glory of the cock pheasant’s plumage. The same remark may be applied to crosses with the Reeves pheasant, which are much more difficult to bring about, because the cross-bred birds only appear to come to maturity in their third year, so that there is little danger; for sportsmen want early maturity before all things in the pheasant pens and coverts, where an immature cock bird would spell disaster.
PHEASANTS AT WARTER PRIORY. LORD LONDESBOROUGH AT HIGH CLIFF