228 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



understand it, or tliey leave it to, or tliey listen 

 to, tlieir keepers, wlio, being ignorant and averse 

 to any additional trouble, set tliem against it, or 

 raise ridiculous and unfounded difficulties, which 

 scare their employers from any such undertaking. 



There is scarcely a so-called keeper that under- 

 stands the requirements of birds at their appointed 

 feeding-places ; and though they, the keepers, 

 find it requisite to have for tlieir own benefit at 

 least two meals a day — breakfast and dinner — they 

 deem that the birds under their very questionable 

 care can live and remain contented with one. 



If you do not feed pheasants twice a day, morn- 

 ing and afternoon, the first food you give them 

 may just as well be sacrificed to pigs. 



If they find, Avhen they are hungry, that at 

 breakfast they had eaten all the food, and that 

 there was not any put for them for dinner, of 

 course they must go further for their last food, 

 and wander to look for it, — too far, perhaps, to 

 think of coming Ijack for breakfast. With ducks 

 in the liome decoy, where they are never dis- 

 turbed, they, too, should always be fed twice a 

 day, morniiKj and evenimj. I have them fed 

 three times a day in one pooh In tlie other 



