Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/765

P H E P H I 733 The use of firearms has put an end to the older practices, and the gun is now the only mode of taking Pheasants recognized as legitimate. 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 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 to a considerable extent 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 Avhich 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 some times 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 ex ample analogous to that of the japanned Peafowl already noticed (PEACOCK, supra, p. 443), being, like that breed, capable of perpetuation by selection. To a small extent 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, 1 and the Copper Pheasant, P. saemmerringi, from Japan. The well- known Gold and Silver Pheasants, P. jrictus and P. nycthemerus, each the type of a distinct section or sub- genus, 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. amherstix 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 must, for want of space, be only mentioned here. All the species known at the time are beautifully figured from drawings by Mr Wolf in Mr Elliot s grand Monograph of the Phasianidx (2 vols., fol., 1870-72) the last term being used in a somewhat general sense. With a more precise scope Mr Tegetmeier s Pheasants : their Natural History and Practical Manage ment (4to, ed. 2, 1881) is to be commended as a very useful work. (A. N.) PHENOL. See CARBOLIC ACID, vol. v. p. 85. PHERECRATES, one of the chief poets of the Old Attic Comedy, was a contemporary of Cratinus, Crates, and Aristophanes, being older than the last and younger than the two former. At first an actor, he seems to have gained a prize for a play in 438 B.C. The only other ascertained date in his life is 420, when he produced his play The Wild Men. Like Crates, whom he imitated, he abandoned personal satire for more general themes. Still in some of the fragments of his plays we find him attacking Alcibiades and others. He was especially famed for his inventive imagination, and the elegance and purity 1 The introduction of this species by Lord Tweedmouth near Guisachan in Inverness-shire is said to have been remarkably successful. of his diction are attested by the epithet ("most Attic") applied to him by Athenseus and the sophist Phrynichus. However, Meineke has shown from his remains that his language deviated considerably from the standard observed by the other comic poets of the day. There is genuine feeling in his address to old age (pre served by Stobseus, Flor., 116, 12). He was the inventor of a new metre, which was called, after him, Pherecratean, 2 and frequently occurs in the choruses of Greek tragedies and in Horace. Pherecrates is variously stated by ancient authorities to have com posed eighteen and sixteen plays ; Meineke reduces the list of his undoubted plays to thirteen. None of them are extant, but a con siderable number of fragments have been preserved. These are given in Meineke, Fragmenta Comicorum Greecorum, vol. ii. (1839), and in Bothe, Frag. Com. Gr. (Paris, 1855). PHERECYDES OP SYROS, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, was the son of Babys and a native of the island of Syros. The dates of his life are variously stated, but there seems to be no doubt that he lived in the 6th century B.C. ; amongst his contemporaries were Thales and Anaximander. He was sometimes reckoned one of the Seven Wise Men, and a very uniform tradition repre sented him as the teacher of Pythagoras. Many wonder ful tales were told of him, e.g., that from drinking water drawn from a well he was able to predict an earthquake three days before it took place. The accounts of his death are very discrepant, but the commonest was that he died of the morlms pediculosus. But, if the minute description which Hippocrates gives of the death of Pherecydes refers to the philosopher, he would seem to have died of a viru lent fever, perhaps spotted typhus. He is said to have been the first Greek author who wrote in prose, but per haps the chronicler Cadmus of Miletus preceded him. The statements of late writers, that he drew his philosophy from secret writings of the Phoenicians, and that he was a disciple of the Egyptians and Chaldaeans, deserve little attention, made as they were at a time when it was the fashion to regard all wisdom as derived from the East. He was credited with having originated the doctrine of metempsychosis, while Cicero and Augustine even assert that he was the first to teach the immortality of the soul. Of his astronomical studies he left a proof in the "helio- tropion," a cave at Syros which served to determine the annual turning-point of the sun, like the grotto of Posillipo at Naples. In his book, to which Suidas gives the name of f-rrra.fj.vxof -fjroi OeoKpairia ij deoyovia, he enunciated a system in which philosophy and mythology were blended. In the beginning, according to Pherecydes, were Zeus, Chronos (Time) or Cronus, and Chthon (Earth); Chronos begat Fire, Wind, and Water, and these three begat numerous other gods. Another PHERECYDES of Athens, an early Greek historian, was a native of the island of Leros, and lived in the former half of the 5th century B.C. Amongst his contemporaries were Hellanicus and Herodotus. Of his works "On Leros," "On Iphigenia," "On the festivals of Dionysus" nothing remains ; but numerous fragments of his great work on mythology, in ten books, have been preserved, and are collected by C. Miiller in his Fr. Hist. Gr. , vol. i. PHIDIAS (t&etoYas), the most famous of Greek sculptors, was born about 500 B.C., and began his artistic career, probably under the guidance of his father, Charmides of Athens, with the study of painting, an art which at that time had attained a singular largeness and dignity of style, while in sculpture these qualities were as yet being sought for with only a somewhat bold and rude result, as may be seen from the remains of it now at Olympia. To do justice to the art of sculpture in this direction there was need of a far greater mastery of tech nical methods, and we may suppose it to have been with this end in view that Phidias, when he had determined to | w ^ , or, as it may be otherwise divided,