STRUCTURE, FOOD, AND HABITS. 



tlie outer or wilder coverts, feed, during mild as well as 

 severe weather, almost wholly on hazel nuts. In tlie first bird 

 that was remarked to contain them, they were reckoned, 

 and found to be twenty-four in number, all of full size and 

 perfect ; in addition were many large insect larvte. Either 

 oats or Indian corn being thrown out every morning before 

 the windows of the cottage for pheasants, I had an oppor- 

 tunity of observing their great preference of the former to 

 the latter. I remarked a pheasant one day in Islay taking 

 the sparrow's place, by picking at horsedung on the road for 

 undigested oats." 



Among the more singular articles of food that form part 

 of the pheasant's very varied dietary may be mentioned the 

 spangles of the oak so common in the autumn on the under 

 side of the leaves. These galls are caused by the presence 

 of the eggs of a gall-fly {Ncuroterus lenticularis), which 

 imay be reared from the spangles if they are collected 

 in the autumu, and kept in a cool and rather moist atmos- 

 phere during the winter. About the fall of the leaf these 

 spangles begin to lose their flat mushroom-like form and red 

 hirsute appearance, and become by degrees raised or bossed 

 towards the middle, in consequence of the growth of the 

 enclosed grub, which now becomes visible when the spangle 

 is cut open. The perfect insect makes its appearance in 

 April and May. Some few years since Mr. R. Carr Ellison 

 published the following account of their being eagerly sought 

 after and devoured by pheasants in a wild state : " Just 

 before the fall of the oak-leaf these spangles (or the greater 

 part of them) become detached from it, and are scattered 

 upon the ground under the trees in great profusion. Our 

 pheasants delight in picking them up, especially from the 

 surface of walks and roads, where they are most easily found. 

 But as they are quite visible even to human eyes, among 

 the wet but undecayed leaves beneath the oaks, wherever 

 pheasants have been turning them up, a store of winter food 

 us evidently provided by these minute and dormant insects 



