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Rh  alternative of two partridges or other birds among the “pitantiae” (rations or commons, as we might now say) of the canons of Waltham Abbey, and, as W. B. Dawkins has remarked (Ibis, 1869, p. 358), neither Anglo-Saxons nor Danes were likely to have introduced it into England. It seems to have been early under legal protection, for, according to Dugdale, a licence was granted in the reign of Henry I. to the abbot of Amesbury to kill hares and pheasants, and from the price at which the latter are reckoned in various documents, we may conclude that they were not very abundant for some centuries, and also that they were occasionally artificially reared and fattened, as appears from Upton, who wrote about the middle of the 15th century, while Henry VIII. seems from his privy purse expenses to have had in his household in 1532 a French priest as a regular “fesaunt breder,” and in the accounts of the Kytsons of Hengrave in Suffolk for 1607 mention is made of wheat to feed pheasants, partridges and quails.

The practice of bringing up pheasants by hand is now 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 pens, 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. The proportion of pheasants artificially bred that “come to the gun” 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 equal 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. For the sport of pheasant-shooting see .

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 Cooke the woods doth most frequent,    Where Spaniells spring and pearche him by the sent."

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 rump 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 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 Japan peafowl (see ), being, like that breed, capable of perpetuation by selection. 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. soemmerringi, from Japan. The well-known gold and silver pheasants, P. pictus and P. nycthemerus, 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 pucras pheasants, Pucrasia, the magnificent monauls, Lophophorus, and the fine snow-pheasants, Crossoptilum—of each of which genera there are several species, may also be mentioned.

All the species known at the time are beautifully figured from drawings by J. Wolf in D. G. Elliot's Monograph of the Phasiandae (2 vols., fol., 1870–1872)—the last term being used in a somewhat general sense. With a more precise scope W. B. Tegetmeier's Pheasants: their Natural History and Practical Management (4th ed., 1904) is to be commended as a very useful work.

 PHEIDIAS, son of Charmides, universally regarded as the greatest of Greek sculptors, was born at Athens about 500 We have varying accounts of his training. Hegias of Athens, Ageladas of Argos, and the Thasian painter Polygnotus, have all been regarded as his teachers. In favour of Ageladas it may be said that the influence of the many Dorian schools is certainly to be traced in some of his work. Of his life we know little apart from his works. Of his death we have two discrepant accounts. According to Plutarch he was made an object of attack by the political enemies of Pericles, and died in prison at Athens. According to Philochorus, as quoted by a scholiast on Aristophanes, he fled to Elis, where he made the great statue of Zeus for the Eleans, and was afterwards put to death by them. For several reasons the first of these tales is preferable.

Plutarch gives in his life of Pericles a charming account of the vast artistic activity which went on at Athens while that statesman was in power. He used for the decoration of his own city the money furnished by the Athenian allies for defence against Persia: it is very fortunate that after the time of Xerxes Persia made no deliberate attempt against Greece. “In all these works,” says Plutarch, “Pheidias was the adviser and overseer of Pericles.” Pheidias introduced his own portrait and that of Pericles on the shield of his Parthenos statue. And it was through Pheidias that the political enemies of Pericles struck at him. It thus abundantly appears that Pheidias was closely connected with Pericles, and a ruling spirit in the Athenian art of the period. But it is not easy to go beyond this general assertion into details.

It is important to observe that in resting the fame of Pheidias upon the sculptures of the Parthenon we proceed with little evidence. No ancient writer ascribes them to him, and he seldom, if ever, executed works in marble. What he was celebrated