370 THE PHEASANT. 



mischief. These are taken with nets and snares. The fewer 

 poachers employed, the more certain is their success. A number of 

 men would only do harm, and mar the plan of capture. So silently 

 is this mode of poaching carried on, that the owner of the soil is not 

 aware of the loss he is about to sustain in the plunder of his game. 

 When his hares and partridges are actually on their way to the 

 dealer's shop, he, " good easy man," may fancy that they are 

 merely on a visit to his neighbour's manor, or that the fox and the 

 polecat may have made free with them. Not so with regard to the 

 capture of the pheasant. The mansion is sometimes beset; guns 

 are fired close to the windows ; females are frightened into hysterics; 

 and, if the owner sallies forth to repel the marauders, his reception 

 is often the most untoward and disagreeable that can well be 

 imagined. 



Having now treated of the pheasant, and the mode which is 

 adopted for its destruction, I will draw upon the reader's time a 

 little longer, by proposing a plan for its propagation and protection. 

 Pheasants would certainly be delightful ornaments to the lawn of the 

 country gentleman, were it not for the annoying idea that any night, 

 from November to May, he runs the risk of getting a broken head, 

 if he ventures out to disturb the sport of those who have assembled 

 to destroy them. There must be something radically wrong in the 

 game laws. How or when those laws are to be amended, is an 

 affair of the legislature. The ornithologist can do no more than 

 point out the grievance which they inflict upon society, and hope 

 that there will soon be a change in them for the better. But to the 

 point. Food and a quiet retreat are the two best offers that man 

 can make to the feathered race, to induce them to take up their 

 abode on his domain ; and they are absolutely necessary to the 

 successful propagation of the pheasant. This bird has a capacious 

 stomach, and requires much nutriment ; while its timidity soor 

 causes it to abandon those places which are disturbed. It is fond 

 of acorns, beech-mast, the berries of the hawthorn, the seeds of the 

 wild rose, and the tubers of the Jerusalem artichoke. As long as 

 these, and the corn dropped in the harvest, can be procured, the 

 pheasant will do very well. In the spring it finds abundance of 

 nourishment in the sprouting leaves of young clover; but, from the 



