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We may therefore infer that the length of the tail in the peacock and its shortness in the peahen are the result of the requisite variations in the male having been from the first transmitted to the male offspring alone. We are led to a nearly similar conclusion with respect to the length of the tail in the various species of pheasants.
One reason, of course, was that gentlemen have expenses outside and beyond breeding and keeping: the shooting party itself is expensive; whereas here the shooting party paid hard cash for their amusement. The steward had no knowledge of pheasants; but he had a wide experience of one side of human nature, and he understood accounts.
Pheasants in the tall trees of the Pangbourne woods, larks on their grassy nests above the gravel-pit at Wansdon, swallows in the eaves at Robin Hill, and the sparrows of Mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by the lack of wind.
Enormous wild turkeys and myriads of partridges, pheasants and pigeons roosted in the neighboring woods. Sometimes the turkeys and deer came down to the houses of the colonists to feed. A stag was frequently sold by the Indians for a loaf of bread, or a knife, or even for a tobacco pipe. The river produced the finest fish.
When Barbara had formerly ascended the Trausnitz, with what pleasure she had gazed at the deep moat at her left, the pheasants, the stately peacocks, and other feathered creatures, as well as a whole troop of lively monkeys; but this time she saw nothing except that the heavy iron-bound portals of the entrance opened before her, that the drawbridge, though the sun was close to the western horizon, was still lowered, and that Quijada stood at the end, motioning to the bearers to set the sedan chair on the ground.
'It is a remarkable fact how this proportion of wing-surface to weight extends throughout a great variety of the flying portion of the animal kingdom, even down to hornets, bees, and other insects. In some instances, however, as in the gallinaceous tribe, including pheasants, this area is somewhat exceeded, but they are known to be very poor fliers.
A poulterer, three doors away, had draped his house-front, from the third story down, with what at first glance appeared to be a single heavy curtain of furs and feathers string upon string of hares, of pheasants, of turkeys, fat geese, wild ducks. This prevailing superabundant good cheer did not, however, extend to the visitor, as the colonel discovered, within the doorway of The Dragon.
Nothing, he opined, would be simpler, or more agreeable, than to drive out or possibly take a train to some wild spot in the vicinity of London Clapham Common perhaps and spend a day among the pheasants. My American friend wanted to kill an English pheasant. He had heard much of them as the best of game-birds. He had eaten them, much refrigerated, in New York and found them good.
He is not only used in England as a water-dog for the pursuit of wild fowl, but has been trained by many sportsmen to hunt on partridges, woodcocks, and pheasants, and is represented by Captain Hawker and others as surpassing all others of the canine race, in finding wounded game of every description. Mr. Blain remarks that,
If the pheasants are so numerous and so tame that passing carters have to whip them out of the way of the horses, it is hardly wonderful if one should disappear now and then. Nor is he like the Running Jack that used to accompany the more famous packs of fox-hounds, opening gates, holding horses, and a hundred other little services, and who kept up with the hunt by sheer fleetness of foot.
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