6 PHEASANTS FOE COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



with their vegetable incasement, in addition to the earth- 

 worms, slugs, &c., which induce the pheasants to forage so 

 industriously, by scratching up the layers of damp leaves 

 in incipient decay which cover the woodland soil in winter. 

 Not only have we found the spangles plentifully in the crops 

 of pheasants that have been shot, but, on presenting leaves 

 covered with them to the common and to the gold pheasants 

 in confinement, we observed the birds to pick them up without 

 a moment's hesitation, and to look eagerly for more/ 5 



The value of pheasants to the agriculturist is scarcely 

 sufficiently appreciated ; the birds destroy enormous numbers 

 of injurious insects upwards of twelve hundred wireworms 

 have been taken out of the crop of a pheasant ; if this number 

 was consumed at a single meal, the total destroyed must be 

 almost incredible. There is no doubt that insects are pre- 

 ferred to grain, one pheasant shot at the close of the 

 shooting season had in its crop 726 wireworms, one acorn, 

 one snail, nine berries, and three grains of wheat. Mr. F. 

 Bond once took out of the crop of a pheasant 440 grubs of the 

 crane fly or daddy longlegs these larvae are exceedingly 

 destructive to the roots of the grass on lawns and pastures. 

 As another instance of their insectivorous character may be 

 mentioned the complaint of Waterton, that they had extir- 

 pated the grasshoppers from Walton Park. They also 

 occasionally eat molluscous animals. Mr. John Bishop, of 

 Llandovery, killed a pheasant on the coast of Islay whose 

 crop was filled with thd coloured snail's shells abounding on 

 the bents or grass stems on the coast. At the meeting of the 

 British Ornithologists' Club, October 21, 1896, I exhibited 

 some snail shells (Helix nemoralis) of full size, no fewer than 

 forty-eight of which I had taken out of the crop of a 

 pheasant. 



Lord Lilford, in his beautiful work on the " Birds 

 of Northamptonshire," writes : " The pheasant, where not 

 preserved in unreasonable numbers, is a good friend to the 

 farmer, from the enormous number of wireworms and other 



