This watercolour was drawn from a specimen brought to England by Dr. Aleksei Nikolaevich Severtzov (1827-1885) a Russian zoologist who explored through Central Asia and discovered that this pheasant was plentiful among dense woods near the Oxus river.
Strangely, although the lithograph of the Phasianus chrysomelas in The Birds of Asia is ascribed on the plate to J. Gould and W. Hart, Gould absent-mindedly wrote in his accompanying text: 'My readers will have no difficulty in perceiving the masterly hand of Mr Wolf in the outline of both the drawings of Pheasants in the present part'. This Pheasant is however significantly absent from the list compiled by A.H. Palmer (Wolf's friend and biographer) of illustrations by Wolf for Gould's The Birds of Asia.
A.H. Palmer, The Life of Joseph Wolf, 1895
DISTRIBUTION: Widespread but local in southeastern Eurasia, eastern and southern Asia. Introduced into Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, and North America.
The birds depicted are the subspecies Phasianus colchicus chrysomelos, the Khivan Pheasant, from the delta of the Amu Daria along the southern shore of the Aral Sea, west to the Ust-wits plateau and south to the Kara Kum desert