172 GAME rRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS. 



keep these pheasants in tlie little cages, twelve 

 feet square, one often sees. Wire netting is 

 cheap, and a sunny nook in an orchard, or 

 a corner in a sln'ubbery, is easily enclosed, 

 where they can have plenty of room ; and 

 they should be moved on to fresh ground two 

 or three times a year. To visit these birds 

 and brino^ them little delicacies is a constant 

 amusement to ladies and children who are fond 

 of live pets. They will eat anything poultry 

 will eat, and the more their food is varied the 

 better. When we have kept a cock to each 

 three hens we have hatched eleven out of 

 thirteen eggs, so we recommend this number. 

 Others keep a cock to five hens. They will 

 begin to lay in April, and will lay from twenty- 

 five to fifty eggs a-piece. We never had a 

 healthy hen that did not lay. 



We were told one year that more than half 

 of a hundred hens which were enclosed in 

 twenty large pens had not laid at all. No 

 doubt, these birds all ate their ess^s. It is 



