164 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS. 



of crows, magpies, and jays, we can scarcely 

 believe that any number of pheasants were 

 reared on his ground, for you cannot both ' eat 

 your cake and have it.' 



A non-sporting visitor, taken out in the 

 evening to see thirty or fort}^ pheasants feed- 

 ing round the woods, w^ould come away with 

 the idea that they were very numerous, al- 

 though he had probably seen every bird on the 

 property ; and as the keepers trapped three 

 or four every w^eek, and they always appeared 

 on the table, the delusion was kept up, and he 

 would consider Mr. Waterton a most successful 

 game preserver. 



]\Ir. A. Elhs imitated Mi\ Waterton's plan, 

 and tells us that on 1,400 acres he used to get 

 six or eiglit brace of pheasants in a day. This 

 admission seems sufficiently to condemn the sys- 

 tem. They must have been nearly extinct before a 

 gun was fired. Let anyone watch five pheasants 

 feeding in a ten-acre field, and ask himself if a 

 pheasant to every two acres is not the minimum 



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