This climate suits the Pheasant pretty well, and at most seasons of the year it finds abundance of food; but in hard winters the supply diminishes, or fails altogether; and were not food specially scattered about for it in its haunts, it would either die off from being unable to withstand cold and hunger together, or become so weak that it would fall a prey to the smaller rapacious animals, who are not a match for it when it is strong and active. A healthy cock Pheasant has been known to beat off a cat; a sickly one would be unable to compete with a Magpie or Jay. It is, in fact, an exotic running wild, and enabled to do so only by the care of those who help it to surmount the inconveniences of a life spent in a foreign land.
The Pheasant is said to have been brought originally from Colchis, a country on the shores of the Black Sea, and to have derived its name from the river Phasis, the famous scene of the expedition of the Argonauts, bearing date about 1200 years before Christ. From this epoch it is said to have been known to the Athenians, who endeavoured to acclimatize it for the sake of its beauty as well as the delicacy of its flesh. The Romans received it from the Greeks; but it was little known, except by name, in Germany, France, and England, until the Crusades. The custom was then introduced from Constantinople of sending it to table decorated with its tail feathers and head, as a dish for kings and emperors--a special honour until that time confined to the Peacock. Willughby, in the seventeenth century, says of it that, from its rarity, delicacy of flavour, and great tenderness, it seems to have been created for the tables of the wealthy. He tells us, too, that the flesh of Pheasants caught by hawking is of a higher flavour, and yet more delicate than when they are taken by snares or any other method.
The kings of France greatly encouraged the naturalization of the Pheasants in the royal forests, both as an object of sport and as an acquisition to the festive board, and were imitated by the nobles and superior clergy. In the fourteenth century, all the royal forests, the parks of Berry and the Loire, all the woods and vineyards of the rich abbeys, were peopled with Pheasants. The male bird was protected by the title of 'Royal game of the first class', and the killing of a hen was forbidden under the severest penalties. During the period between the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XVI its estimation increased. During the revolution royal edicts were little heeded. Pheasants, no less than their owners, forfeited their dignity, which, however, rose again somewhat under the empire. Waterloo, and succeeding events, brought desolation to the Pheasantries as well as to the deer-parks of France; and now the royal bird, French authors tell us, is likely to disappear from the country. Already, the space which it occupies is reduced to a thirtieth part of the national territory. The centre of this privileged province is Paris; its radius is not more than five-and-twenty leagues, and is decreasing every year. Pheasants have disappeared from the districts of the Garonne and Rhone, while in Touraine and Berry a few only are to be found in walled parks.