HISTORICAL NOTES 95 



January 5, 1835, 86 pheasants and over 

 100 head of game were killed in an after- 

 noon by seven guns, the Dukes of 

 Rutland and Wellington, Lords Denbigh, 

 Forester, and Burghersh, General Upton, 

 and Mr. Croker. 



Probably one of the earliest records 

 of covert shooting — on what must have 

 seemed a large scale in those days — comes 

 from Writham in Norfolk, where the 

 Duke of Bedford with six other guns 

 killed 80 cock pheasants and 40 hares 

 one day in 1796. Certainly from Nor- 

 folk came the whole system of modern 

 pheasant shooting, for while others were 

 still content to walk their woods in line. 

 Lord Leicester had already appreciated 

 the latent possibilities of the pheasant as 

 a bird of sport, and early in the nineteenth 

 century the famous coverts in the park at 

 Holkham were shot on the regular plan 

 which has ever since been followed there, 

 and on which every good rise of pheasants 

 in the country is, directly or indirectly, 

 modelled. 



