94 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



From earliest youth, therefore, the birds are more or less 

 inured to the ever-changing sights and sounds incidental to 

 ordinary traffic. Their thus seeing and hearing all going on 

 around gradually enables them to acquire such an amount of 

 courage that curiosity usurps the place of fright, the cocks 

 crowing joyously yet defiantly, while the hens peer inquisi- 

 tively, yet fearlessly, through the lattice of their harems. 

 The pens should be sufficiently shielded by trees, so as to 

 insure in very sunny weather a grateful shade ; nevertheless, 

 too much leafy shelter is apt to prove provocative of damp 

 and cold. They should also, while enjoying a southern 

 aspect, be well protected from the east wind. Thus placed, 

 the birds are better left without any well meant but fanciful 

 attempts at further increasing their comfort. The little 

 matters above enumerated excepted, the more they are 

 exposed to the elements and permitted to rough it, the 

 healthier and more robust they will become. 



"As in our present case here, so it frequently occurs 

 that insufficient space militates against that annual shifting 

 of aviaries on to new ground, so often recommended, and 

 upon which, so far as my experience serves me, where the 

 utmost attention to scrupulous cleanliness has been observed, 

 unnecessary stress is laid. 



" After the laying season, when our birds have availed 

 themselves of the liberty accorded them, the pens are com- 

 pletely denuded of their contents. The ground is trenched 

 spade deep, thickly sown with unslacked lime, then covered 

 with from two to three inches of fresh, clean, dry loam, and 

 finally freely moistened with water through an ordinary 

 garden-rosed watering-pot, when any floating lime dust is 

 effectually disposed of, and the young birds may with safety 

 be introduced. 



" Our aviary, in its entirety, measures in width about 

 27ft., and length 108ft., there being, however, three transverse 

 divisions, four square compartments are thus formed. A 

 small trench, one foot in depth, is dug around the whole 



