STRUCTURE, FOOD, AND HABITS. 



noxious insects which it devours, to say nothing of its liking 

 for the roots of various weeds ; but it would be absurd to 

 deny that grain forms its favourite food, and a field of 

 standing beans will, as is well known, draw pheasants for 

 miles. It is very much the fashion to feed the birds with 

 maize ; but, in our own opinion, the flesh of pheasants which 

 have been principally fed upon this corn is very far inferior in 

 flavour to that of those who have found their own living 

 upon what the land may offer them." 



Like their allies, the domestic fowls, pheasants are occa- 

 sionally carnivorous in their appetite. A correspondent 

 writes : " This morning my keeper brought me a pied cock 

 pheasant, found dead (but still warm) in some standing barley. 

 The bird was in the finest condition, and showed no marks 

 whatever, when plucked, of a violent death. On searching 

 the gullet I extracted a short-tailed field mouse, which had 

 doubtless caused death by strangulation." And a similar 

 instance was recorded by Mr. Hutton, of Northallerton. The 

 Hon. and Rev. C. Bathurst, in a letter published in London's 

 Magazine of Natural History, vol. ii., p. 153, relates that Sir 

 John Ogilvy saw a pheasant flying off with a common slow- 

 worm (Anguis fragilis) ; that this reptile does sometimes form 

 part of the food of the pheasant is confirmed by Mr. J. E. 

 Harting, who recounts in his work on " The Birds of Middle- 

 sex," that "on examining the crop of a pied pheasant, shot in 

 October, 1864, I was surprised to find in it a common slow- 

 worm (Anguis frayili^} which measured eight inches in length. 

 It was not quite perfect, having lost the tip of the tail ; 

 otherwise, if whole, it would probably have measured nine 

 inches. 



In October, 1888, Mr. J. B. Footner, of Tunbridge Wells, 

 forwarded to me three young vipers that were found with 

 five others of equal size in the crop of a three parts grown 

 hen pheasant, which he himself shot as a wild bird. Their 

 length was slightly in excess of 7in., and the weight of the 

 largest was exactly oz. They were evidently young of the 



