Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/764

732 P H E- strength ; ethereal tinctures are in the proportion of one part in ten ; and the tinctures of the alkaloids and their salts contain one part of the alkaloid in ninety-nine of menstruum. Homceopathic and eclectic practitioners as well as dentists have also their special pharmacopoeias. See Bell and Redwood, Progress of Pharmacy (London, 1SSO) ; Schercr, Literatura Pharmofopa-arum (Lcipsic and Sorau, 1S22) ; Hint, Report on the Pharmacopeias of all .Vo/io/w (Washington, 18S3) ; Report of the Proceedings of the Fifth International Pharmaceutical Congress (1881). (E. M. H.) PHEASANT, Middle- English Fesaunt and Fesaun, German Fasan and anciently Fasant, French Faisan all from the Latin Phasianus or Phasiana (sc. ains), the Bird brought from the banks of the river Phasis, now the Eioni, in Colchis, Avhere it is still abundant, and introduced by the Argonauts, it is said, in Avhat passes for history, into Europe. As a matter of fact nothing is known on this point ; and, judging from the recognition of the remains of several species referred to the genus Pkasianus both in Greece and in France, 1 it seems not impossible that the ordinary Pheasant, the P. colchicus of ornithologists, may have been indigenous to this quarter of the globe. If it was introduced into England, it must almost certainly have been brought hither by the Romans ; for, setting aside several earlier records of doubtful authority, 2 Bishop Stubbs has shewn that by the regulations of King Harold in 1059 " unus jjhasianus " is prescribed as the alternative of two Partridges or other birds among the "pitantise" (rations or commons, as we might now say) of the canons of Waltham Abbey, and, as Prof. Dawkins has remarked (Ibi-s, 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 that have come down to us, 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, 3 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 Avheat to feed Pheasants, Partridges, and Quails. Within recent years the practice of bringing up Pheasants by hand has been 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 a mew, 4 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 1 These are P. archiaci from Pikermi, P. altus and P. meclius from the lacustrine beds of Sansan, and P. desnoyersi from Touraine, see A. Milne-Edwards, Ois. foss. de la France (ii. pp. 229, 239-243). 2 Among these perhaps that worthy of most attention is in Probert s translation of The Ancient Laws of Cambria (ed. 1823, pp. 367, 368), wherein extracts are given from Welsh triads, presumably of the age of Howel the Good, who died in 948. One of them is "There are three barking hunts : a bear, a squirrel, and a pheasant." The ex planation is " A pheasant is called a barking hunt, because when the pointers come upon it, and chase it, it takes to a tree, where it is hunted by baiting." The present writer has not been able to trace the manu script containing these remarkable statements so as to find out what is the original word rendered " Pheasant " by the translator ; but a reference to what is probably the same passage with the same mean ing is given by Ray (Sijnops. Meth. Animalium, pp. 213, 214) on the authority of Llwyd or Lloyd, though there is no mention of it in Wotton and Clarke s Lerjfs Wallica (1730). A charter (Kemble, Cod. Diplom., iv. p. 236), professedly of Edward the Confessor, granting the wardenship of certain forests in Essex to Ralph Peperking, speaks of "fesant hen" and "fesant cocke," but is now known to be spurious. 3 In his De studio militari (not printed till 1654) he states (p. 195) that the Pheasant was brought from the East by "Palladius ancorista." 4 The writer is informed that, in 1883, 134,000 Pheasants eggs were sold from one estate in Suffolk. P H E 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. Of the proportion of Pheasants artificially bred that " come to the gun " when the shooting season arrives it is impossible to form any estimate, for it would seem to vary enormously, not only irregularly according to the weather, but regularly accord ing 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 equally unremitting 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. The various effects of the modern system of Pheasant -breeding and Pheasant -shooting need here be treated but briefly. It is commonly condemned as giving encouragement to poaching, and, especially under ignorant management, as substituting slaughter for sport. Un doubtedly there is much to be said on this score ; but in reply to the first objection it has been urged that as a rule the poacher does not like visiting coverts that he knows to be effectively preserved, and that coverts con taining a great stock of Pheasants, whose rearing has cost a considerable sum of money, are probably the most effectively preserved. As to the second objection it is to be observed that what constitutes sport is in great measure a matter of individual taste, and that the reasonable limit of a sportsman s "bag" is practically an unknown quantity. One man likes shooting a Pheasant rising at his feet or sprung by his spaniels, as it flies away from him through the trees and is still labouring to attain its full speed ; another prefers shooting one that has mounted to its greatest height, and, assisted perhaps by the wind, is traversing the sky at a pace that almost passes calculation. If skill has to be considered in the definition of sport there can be no doubt as to which of these cases most requires it. In regard to cruelty that is, the proportion of birds wounded to those killed there seems to be little difference, for the temptation to take "long shots" is about equal in either case. The Pheasant whose wing is broken by the charge, if at a great height, is often killed outright by the fall, whereas, if nearer the ground, it will often make good its escape by running, possibly to recover, or more possibly to die after lingering in pain for a longer or shorter time. On the other hand, high-flying Pheasants, having their vital parts more exposed, are often hit in the body, but not hard enough to bring them down, though the wound they have received proves mortal, and the velocity at which they are travelling takes them beyond reach of retrieval. 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 Peasant Cocke the woods doth most frequent, Where Spaniells spring and pearche him by the sent."" 5 Quoted by the writer (Broderip ?) of the article " Spaniel " in the Penny Cyclopaedia. The lines throw light on the asserted Welsh prac tice mentioned in a former note.