account of the two birds mentioned as having been
ed into the British Islands, namely P. versicolor from Japan, and P. torquatus from Southern

China, together with several other species of this beautiful group of birds, respecting which it is only
e that they nearly all inhabit the northern part of that great land-section of the

e of them are found in India.

P. colchicus in a pure state is the d
f its rump, a dark green stripe OV
the Chinese P. torquatus is conspicuous for the light silvery green mark over each eye,
and the light buff colouring of its flank-feathers ; while the Japanese bird, with
om both. The birds usually shot in our woods exhibit

In my work on the birds of Asia will be found a full

recently introduc

necessary to mention her
globe called Asia, and that non

Of all the true Pheasants the
recognized by the deep chestnut hue o

arkest in colour, and may be always
er each eye, and the uniform redness

of its flank-feathers ;
the glaucous green of its rump,
1 green breast and sides, differs materially fr
an intermixture of all these tints and markings, no two being precisely alike.

As an evidence that the same colours ‘n cross-bred birds cannot be perpetuated I append two notes which

I find among my MSS. bearing upon this point.

« Burdett, the clever keeper of the Earl of Craven,
round its neck the first year had a very broad one during the second, and that in the third it had totally
disappeared. ‘I am positive of this,’ he says, oe

«Mr. J. H. Gurney bred some extremely beautiful first-cross birds between a Green Pheasant, obtained at
the Earl of Derby’s sale, and the species common in his woods at North Repps, in Norfolk ; and although
d to be extremely healthy, and some of them exceeding four pounds in weight, the race could
Mr. Gurney assuring me tbat after an interval of a few years there was no strain of the

its splendic

informs me that a Pheasant which had a narrow ring
S

‘as it was never taken out of the pen in which it was kept.

they appeare
not be perpetuated,

green bird left.”
On this head too, Mr. Stevenson, in his ‘ Birds of Norfolk,’ has the following passage :—‘‘ From personal

observation and inquiry, however, during the last two or three years, it appears that evidences of this cross
even in the coverts where these hybrids were most plentiful, are now scarcely perceptible, the strong chatee
teristics of the Chinese bird apparently absorbing all the less-marked, though darker, tints of the Jansen
hee ee ee eee oe upwards of four and a half pounds ; and many examples which
vere stuffed for the beauty of their plumage will b nd it tI ° ,
The accompanying ee ei, an a a a ane _ hi ome a.
and true Phasianus colchicus, which has met with a fate

to which hundreds of its brethren are annually subjected.