ON THE REARING OF PHEASANTS BY HAND. 139 



some aiitliors, and the babbling- nonsense indulged 

 in by sundry professors, I might fill half a volume 

 with their blatant mistakes. Darwin, let alone his 

 daring attack on the historic Deity and origin of 

 man, fails in his mere ornithological lore, and 

 declares that tliat well-known bird, ^' the snipe," 

 ^' never breeds in England." Professor Owen did 

 not know a whale's tooth from the canine fano- of a 

 badger, while other professors have declared that 

 some of the skulls of the Bovine race, in my posses- 

 sion through the kind jDcrmission of his Grace the 

 possessor of Haddon Hall, were the skulls of 

 the Bos longifrons of the ancient Britons. And 

 Avhen I replied ^^ that they ivere not,^^ the answer 

 made was, ^Hliat of course My. Berkeley, as usual, 

 knew better than anybody else." 



And in this instance so I dldj for the beasts 

 belonging to the skulls had been killed each by a 

 bullet , and gunpowder was aiot a commodity used by 

 the ancients referred to. For my own particular 

 amusement, I had kept the bullet-marks out of sight. 

 Again, Ave have in the work which Yarrell left 

 behind him, a picture of what he called a ^^ rare bird, 

 supposed to breed in Norway or Sweden," to whicli 

 he gave the name of the '^ bimaculated duck." 



