CH. II.] HATCHING BY PHEASANTS AND HENS. 169 



The process of hatching appears to occupy a 

 much shorter time when the sitting mother is a 

 Pheasant, than when the eggs have been put 

 under a Common Fowl. Should you have ex- 

 amined a Pheasant's nest in the morning, and 

 found none of the eggs pecked, you may, on re- 

 turning to it the same afternoon or evening, find 

 every single one hatched and the young birds 

 clear off. Under a Common Fowl hatching a clutch 

 of Pheasants' eggs is a work of generally from 

 thirty-six to forty-eight hours, and then, in most 

 cases, one or two of the number will prove to be 

 addled or fail to be drawn out. The only way 

 in which I can account for this delay in the 

 hatching, is by supposing the heat of the Phea- 

 sant to be more regularly diffused than that of 

 the Fowl. The reason why the Pheasant generally 

 succeeds in bringing to maturity a larger propor- 

 tion of her eggs than the Fowl, may be that her 

 own are turned by herself, whilst those intrusted 

 to the Fowl are turned by the keeper. 



Two Pheasants' nests have been this year (1859) 

 found by a friend's keeper, a large proportion of 

 the eggs in which were smaller than any of the 

 kind that had ever come under my notice, being 

 about the size of those of Magpies'. One contained 



