2O4 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS LETTER 



near your boundary, place it for preference so as to 

 obtain the assistance of our prevailing winds, west 

 and south-west, in order to more easily drive the birds 

 that stray thereto homewards. 



If you desire to know what head of game you 

 have on an estate, take a pair of opera glasses and 

 walk quietly about in autumn of a fine bright calm 

 day, at sunrise or sunset, on the sunny aspect of the 

 coverts. All game steals forth to feed at these hours, 

 and may be counted with fair accuracy even the 

 coveys of partridges in the fields. You cannot well 

 judge, from the crowing of the cock pheasants as they 

 fly up to roost, how many there are, though of course 

 you can distinguish between a large and a small 

 quantity of birds ; you can, however, form a good 

 idea of the number of birds that come up to feed, 

 though to the unpractised eye 100 pheasants crowding 

 over their corn and running in and out amongst one 

 another might easily be set down as 150 or perhaps 200. 



So much for the pheasant a bird that life would 

 be very dull without, as he is a constant source of 

 amusement, and brings more people together in 

 English country houses, and is more a means of en- 

 couraging sociability and forming friendships, than all 

 our other sources of sport put together ; not to speak 

 of the circulation of money, and promotion of trade in 

 a hundred different ways as well, which this famous 

 game bird is the promoter of. 



