STRUCTURE, FOOD, AND HABITS. 9 



inflamed^ and death is frequently tlie result. From the pro- 

 venticulus the food passes into the gizzard, which is lined 

 with a dense thick skin ; in its cavity the food is ground 

 down to a pulp, the process being assisted by the presence of 

 the numerous small stones and angular pieces of gravel, &c., 

 swallowed by the bird. The food, thus ground to a pulp, 

 passes on into the intestines, which are no less than six feet 

 in length; in the upper part of this long canal it is mingled 

 Avith the bile formed in the liver, the pancreatic fluid, &c., 

 and, as it passes from one extremity to the other, the nourish- 

 ment for the support of the animal is extracted ; this being 

 greatly aided by the operation of the two casca, or blind 

 intestines, which are very large in all the birds of this 

 group. 



The flight of the pheasant is strong, and is performed by 

 rapid and frequent beats of the wing, the tail at the same 

 time being expanded. The force with which the bird flies 

 may be inferred from the result which has not unfrequently 

 occurred when it has come into contact with thick plate-glass 

 in windows. Colonel Turbervill, writing from Bwenny 

 Priory, Glamorgan, in March 1897 states : " I was sitting in 

 our drawing-room, with a large plate glass window about 

 2 yards behind me, when I heard a loud crash, and a shower 

 of broken glass fell about me, one piece cutting my head. 

 On looking round I saw a large hole in the upper part of the 

 window, and a hen pheasant lying, nearly dead, between 3ft. 

 and 4ft. from the window inside the room. The plate glass 

 through which the pheasant flew is one-fitth of an inch thick, 

 and pieces o£ it were found on the carpet 14ft. from the 

 window.^' A correspondent states : " A few days ago, a cock 

 pheasant rose about three hundred yards from my house 

 and flew against the centre of a plate glass window, smashing 

 it into a thousand fragments. The glass was 3ft. Sin. by 

 oft. 4in,, and ^in. thick; and such was the force of the 

 concussion that not a single piece remained six inches square. 

 A slight snow on the ground rendered the window more than 



