NOTES FROM GRAVESEND. l&l 



require great attention when young, principally in supply ing them with 

 the proper food, and this at stated periods. These were fed regularly 

 every two hours throughout the day; but no particular precautions 

 were taken to screen them from the cold, as they were kept in an open 

 coop (in front), with merely the addition of a wire frame at night to 

 screen them from the rats. During the day they had the run of a grass 

 plat, the coop being shifted weekly to a fresh spot. In this manner 

 they grew rapidly, and both arrived at maturity. I should mention 

 that they had the advantage of having an extremely careful hen for a 

 mother, which is a highly necessary point, as I have had whole broods, 

 both of partridges and pheasants (but especially the former), trampled 

 to death by the clumsiness or over anxiety of their foster parent. The 

 great impediment to breeding from these birds (in a state of captivity) 

 is the extraordinary ferocity of the male. He is, in fact, a perfect 

 Blue-beard. The individual, whose history I am relating, not only 

 destroyed the female that was reared with him, but also killed two 

 more in the two consecutive years, and has therefore ever since led a 

 life of blest celibacy. I do not know how to account for this strange 

 moroseness of disposition. Perhaps it arose from his having only one 

 partner on whom to bestow his affections, as they are probably salacious, 

 like the rest of this family. Be this as it may, he still lives to repent 

 of his barbarity. He has survived the severe winters of 1829-30, 

 1830-31, although his sole protection from the cold has been a coop by 

 no means air-tight, into which he is driven at night, and always enters 

 it with apparent reluctance. But the circumstance I am about to 

 mention affords a still more decisive proof of their capability of endur- 

 ing the inclemency of our climate. Whilst in company with a party 

 who were pheasant -shooting the year before last, the beaters sprang a 

 very fine cock gold pheasant, which was known to have escaped from a 

 menagerie more than a year before ! It has frequently been seen sub- 

 sequently, and the keepers moreover report that they have noticed a 

 variety which they considered was the offspring of this bird and the 

 common pheasant. 



I was much pleased, a few days since, to hear the delicate warble of 

 the golden-crested wren (Motacilla regulus}. It had taken its station 

 in a low but bushy fir-tree, so that I was enabled to approach almost 

 close to it. It is very seldom that such an opportunity presents itself, 

 and I was agreeably surprised to find its song so varied. One of your 

 correspondents says, that in confinement these birds are so extremely 

 susceptible of cold, that the least exposure to it is fatal. This is very 



VOL. n. NO. iv. B B 



