ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 133 



rearing of pheasants which are not to be devi- 

 ated from through circumstantial change ; l)ut 

 much must be left to the watcliful vigilance of 

 the keeper in attendance, and, in fact, there are 

 very few men capable of understanding the re- 

 quirements of the young lives entrusted to their 

 charge. Some people think that if they clothe 

 a man in a shooting-jacket, and put a gun 

 into liis hand, calling him a keeper, he must be 

 able to breed up the most difficult birds to rear 

 that ever came under the liuman hand. 



For a long time it puzzled me to know how 

 young pheasants of the season, when in the 

 autumn or commencement of winter they had 

 become full-grown, could live when all the corn 

 had been swept from the fields by reap-hook, 

 scythe, the gleaner, and the swine, and there 

 were neither acorns nor beech-masts, nor the 

 little root which in some ^ places is called the 

 pig-nut, of wliich pheasants are very fond. Of 

 course, the one and only way to clear up the 

 point was by examining the contents of the crop, 

 and in each case I found the crop to be full of 

 the habitation of an insect that lives in a little 

 blister-like excrescence which may be found, in 



