PHEASANTS. And Mnesimachus, in his play called Philip, (and Mnesimachus is one of the poets of the Middle Comedy,) says—
And as the proverb runs, it is more rare
Than milk of birds, or than a splendid pheasant
Artistically pluck'd.
And Theophrastus the Eresian, a pupil of Aristotle, mentions them in the third book of his Treatise on Animals, speaking nearly as follows—"There is also some such difference as this in birds. For the heavy birds which are not so well suited for flying, such as the woodcock, the partridge, the cock, and the pheasant, are very well adapted for walking and have thick plumage." And Aristotle, in the eighth book of his History of Animals, writes thus:—"Now of birds there are some which are fond of dusting themselves, and some which are fond of washing, and some which neither dust nor wash themselves. And those which are not good flyers, but which keep chiefly on the ground, are fond of dusting themselves; such as the common fowl, the partridge, the woodcock, the pheasant, the lark." Speusippus also mentions them in the second book of his treatise on Things Resembling one another. And the name these men give the pheasant is [Greek: phasianos], not [Greek: phasianikos].
38. But Agatharchides of Cnidos, in the thirty-fourth book of his History of the Affairs of Europe, speaking of the river Phasis, writes as follows:—"But the great multitude of the birds called pheasants ([Greek: phasianoi]) come for the sake of food to the places where the mouths of the rivers fall into the sea." And Callixenus the Rhodian, in the fourth book of his Account of Alexandria, describing a procession which took place in Alexandria, when Ptolemy who was surnamed Philadelphus was king, mentions, as a very extraordinary circumstance connected with these birds—"Then there were brought on in cases parrots, and peacocks, and guinea-fowl, and pheasants, and an immense number of Æthiopian birds." And Artemidorus the pupil of Aristophanes, in his book entitled The Glossary of Cookery, and Pamphilus the Alexandrian, in his treatise on Names and Words, represents Epænetus as saying in his Cookery Book that the pheasant is also called [Greek: tatyras]. But Ptolemy Euergetes, in the second book of his Commentaries, says that the pheasant is called [Greek: tetartos]. Now this is what I am able to tell you about the pheasant, which I have seen
