8 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



same brood. In his letter Mr Footner recalled the fact that 

 Sir Kenelm Digby, who lived in the time of Charles I., and 

 married a lady of great beauty, used to feed his wife on 

 capons fattened on adders, which were believed to preserve 

 beauty. Sir Kenelm Digby, whose portrait may be seen in 

 Vandyke's Iconography, was remarkable as a charlatan, who 

 proposed to cure wounds by applying a sympathetic powder 

 to the weapons they were caused by, and who published a 

 treatise " Secrets pour la Beaute des Dames/' from which 

 the viper treatment is extracted. 



Mr. G. F. Passmore, of Speranza, Exeter, writing in the 

 Field of June 2, 1900, states : " An extraordinary fatality 

 occurred to one of my hen pheasants, confined with a number 

 of others in a large pen, at Lambert, Hatherleigh, North 

 Devon, on Sunday, November 27, between 11 a.m. and 

 4 p.m. The pheasant, when found, had swallowed about 

 6in. of a viper, whilst about 8in. of the tail part of the reptile 

 was protruding from the mouth of the bird. Both the bird 

 and viper were dead/' 



The structure of the digestive organs of the pheasant is 

 perfectly adapted to the assimilation of the food on which it 

 feeds. The sharp edge of the upper mandible of the bill is 

 admirably fitted for cutting off portions of the vegetables on 

 which it partly subsists, and the whole organ is equally well 

 adapted for securing the various articles of its extensive 

 dietary. The food, when swallowed, passes into a very 

 capacious membranous crop, situated under the skin at the 

 fore part of the breast. From this organ portions gradually 

 pass into the true digestive stomach, or proventiculus ; this is 

 a short tube, an inch and a half long, connecting the crop 

 with the gizzard. Small as this organ may be, it is one of 

 extreme importance, as the numerous small glands of which 

 it mainly consists secrete the acid digestive or gastric fluid 

 necessary to the digestion of the food ; and in cases in which 

 pheasants or fowls are fed on too great an abundance of 

 animal food, or any highly stimulating diet, this organ becomes 



