Habits of the Pheasant. 313 



merly to experience in an evening's saunter down the vale. 

 They have completely exterminated the grasshoppers. For 

 these last fourteen years I have not once heard the voice of 

 this merry summer charmer in the park. 



In order to render useless all attempts of the nocturnal 

 poacher to destroy the pheasants, it is absolutely necessary 

 that a place of security should be formed. I know of no 

 position more appropriate than a piece of level ground, at 

 the bottom of a hill, bordered by a gentle stream. About 

 three acres of this, sowed with whins, and surrounded by a 

 holly fence, to keep the cattle out, would be the very thing. 

 In the centre of it, for the space of one acre, there ought to 

 be planted spruce fir trees, about fourteen feet asunder. 

 Next to the larch, this species of tree is generally preferred by 

 the pheasants for their roosting place ; and it is quite impos- 

 sible that the poachers can shoot them in these trees. More- 

 over, magpies and jays will always resort to them at night- 

 fall ; and they never fail to give the alarm, on the first 

 appearance of an enemy. Many a time has the magpie been 

 of essential service to me, in a night excursion after poachers. 

 If there be no park wall, an eye ought to be kept, from time 

 to time, on the neighbouring hedges. Poachers are apt to 

 set horse-hair snares in them; and these villanous nooses 

 give the pheasants apoplexy. Six or seven dozen of wooden 

 pheasants, nailed on the branches of trees, in the surround- 

 ing woods, cause unutterable vexation and loss of ammunition 

 to these amateurs of nocturnal plunder. Small clumps of 

 hollies, and yew trees with holly hedges round them, are of 

 infinite service, when planted at intervals of 150 yards. To 

 these the pheasants fly, on the sudden approach of danger 

 during the day, and skulk there till the alarm is over. 

 When incubation is going on, the diurnal poachers make 

 great havoc among the pheasant's eggs. They sell sittings 

 of them for five shillings (and sometimes for ten, if the risk 

 in procuring them be great), to gentlemen in towns, who 

 place them under bantam hens. If to these arrangements 

 for protecting pheasants there could be added a park wall from 

 nine to ten feet high, and including about 250 acres, con- 

 sisting of wood, meadow, pasture, and arable land, the na- 

 turalist might put all enemies at defiance, and revel in the 

 enchanting scene afforded by the different evolutions of single 

 pairs, and congregated groups of animated nature. Unmo- 

 lested by packs of hounds, unbroken in upon by idle boys, 

 and unannoyed by stray cattle, and by those going in search 

 of them, his wildfowl would never desert the pool till their 

 day of migration arrived ; and his pheasants (except for the 



