t the same
time, although this gorgeous creature, the chief attraction of social
gatherings throughout the winter months, appeals chiefly to the men who
shoot and eat it, it is not uninteresting to the naturalist with
opportunities for studying its habits under conditions more favourable
than those encountered when in pursuit of it with a gun.

In the first place, with the probable exception of the swan, of which
something is said on a later page, the pheasant stands alone among the
birds of our woodlands in its personal interest for the historian. It is
not, in fact, a British bird, save by acclimatisation, at all, and is
generally regarded as a legacy of the Romans. The time and manner of its
introduction into Britain are, it is true, veiled in obscurity. What we
know, on authentic evidence, is that the bird was officially recognised
in the reign of Harold, and that it had already come under the aegis of
the game laws in that of Henry I, during the first year of which the
Abbot of Amesbury held a licence to kill it, though how he contrived
this without a gun is not set forth in detail. Probably it was first
treed with the aid of dogs and then shot with bow and arrow. The
original pheasant brought over by the Romans, or by whomsoever may have
been responsible for its naturalisation on English soil, was a
dark-coloured bird and not the type more familiar nowadays since its
frequent crosses with other species from the Far East, as well as with
several ornamental types of yet more recent introduction.

In tabooing the standpoint of sport, wherever possible, from these
chapters, occasional reference, where it overlaps the interests of the
field-naturalist, is inevitable. Thus there are two matters in which
both classes are equally concerned when considering the pheasant. The
first is the real or alleged incompatibility of pheasants and foxes in
the same wood. The question of rivalry between pheasant and fox, or (as
I rather suspect) between those who shoot the one and hunt the other,
admits of only one answer. The fox eats the pheasant; the pheasant is
eaten by the fox. This not very complex proposition may read like an
excerpt from a French grammar, but it is the epitome of the whole
argument. It is just possible--we have no actual evidence to go on--that
under such wholly natural conditions as survive nowhere in rural England
the two might flourish side by side, the fox taking occasional toll of
its agreeably flavoured