146 PHEASANTS FOB COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



occurred amongst the birds in one locality. The cases are 

 usually perfectly isolated. 



It not unfrequently happens that large numbers of young 

 pheasants die of mysterious ailments, the causes of which 

 are very difficult to determine. When they have been 

 ascertained, they have not unfrequently been traced to some 

 injurious substances that have been taken as food. In one 

 case that came under my notice, the destructive agent was 

 sheep ^s wool. A correspondent wrote, stating that during 

 six weeks he lost upwards of 300 young pheasants from no 

 apparent cause, but that subsequently he received a letter 

 from his gamekeeper, who wrote : — " I have found out the 

 cause of the pheasants dying. The farmer kept his sheep 

 so long upon that piece of ground before I had the use of 

 it, that the sheep lost a lot of wool, and my young birds 

 have swallowed it. I have opened forty or fifty young 

 birds, and found the gizzards quite full of wool, and the 

 passage stopped up, so that food could not pass. I send 

 you four pieces of wool, which I have taken from the gizzards 

 of four different birds. I never had a better lot of young 

 birds. They hatched off strong and well, and now I have 

 lost nearly all of them." 



It is probable that the sheep might have been dressed 

 with some arsenical or other poisonous '' dip " or " wash," 

 which would remain on the wool and prove fatal to the young 

 birds. The arsenical solution known as " weed-killer " is 

 not unfrequently fatal to pheasants in pleasure grounds; it 

 kills the worms and grubs that are near the surface of the 

 paths, and these are eaten by the pheasants with fatal effect. 



With regard to injurious substances taken as food, it is 

 unquestionable that pheasants are sometimes destroyed by 

 eating yew; but it is singular that the precise conditions 

 under which they are poisoned have not been ascertained. 

 The poisoning of animals from eating these leaves is so 

 well known that damages have been claimed and obtained, 

 after an appeal to the higher courts, by persons who have 



