STRUCTURE, FOOD, AND HABITS. 17 



A third states that "at Chaddlewood, near Plympton, 

 Devon, a pheasant has built its nest (twelve feet from the 

 ground) in a fork of an ash tree close to the house, and has 

 laid eight eggs." 



It is difficult to ascertain whether or not in the instances 

 in which the young are hatched in these elevated situations, 

 they fall out of the nest and survive or are killed and carried 

 away by predatory animals, or whether they are safely 

 removed by the parent birds, and if so, by what means ; even 

 the following accounts do not throw much light upon the 

 subject. In the Zoologist for 1894 (p. 266) the late Lord 

 Lilford wrote that a pheasant had appropriated a wood- 

 pigeon's nest, in which she laid nine eggs. Three young 

 birds were afterwards found dead at the foot of the tree 

 which contained the nest, the inference being that the 

 remainder of the brood had reached the ground in safety. A 

 correspondent of The Field stated that " A hen pheasant made 

 her nest in an oak tree, about nine feet from the ground. 

 The young were hatched, and she succeeded in taking seven 

 young ones safely to the ground, leaving five dead in the nest, 

 and one bad egg." Another stated that in the park at 

 Fillingham, Lincoln, a pheasant deposited eight eggs in the 

 nest of a woodpigeon in a fir tree upwards of sixteen feet 

 from the ground ; she hatched out seven of them, but was 

 unfortunate, as four were killed ; they were supposed to have 

 fallen from the nest. A third reported that on the estate 

 of the Marquis of Hertford, at Sudborne Hall, Suffolk, a 

 pheasant had taken possession of a nest deserted by a sparrow- 

 hawk, in a spruce fir, twenty-five feet from the ground, and 

 hatched eight young ones, seven of which she succeeded in 

 bringing safely down, but in what manner was not stated. 

 Mr. Arthur Cole, of Eccles Hall, Attleborough, Norfolk, 

 writing in 1897, states that "on May 7 I found a pheasant 

 sitting on eight eggs in an old squirrel's drey 16ft. 7in. from 

 the ground. It is the more curious as the drey is by no means 

 on strong boughs, and, therefore, must sway tremendously as 



