TREATING OF THE PHEASANT AND ITS EGG. 5 



round provided always that he be started from a 

 befitting height into as skyscraping a rocketer as 

 the bedraggled wild-bred (save the mark !) youngster 

 who, the last of the Mohicans, the one remaining 

 miserable of a perhaps once imposing nide, follows 

 his selfish forgetful mother, as, utterly oblivious of 

 her progeny, she rustles hastily through the thick 

 damp standing corn. Hen pheasants are curiously 

 bad mothers. In a rough country they will barely 

 rear on an average more than three in a brood ; and, 

 had I been a pheasants' egg, with the necessary 

 power, most impiously should I have prayed for my 

 mother's nest to be rifled, and poor me comfortably 

 hatched and tenderly nurtured under the anxious wing 

 of the homely but necessary barndoor. Yea, they 

 soon turn wild, do the poor weakly-looking little 

 products of our artificial skill ; it is the place where 

 they have constantly fed in security rather than the 

 person who feeds them which gives them confidence ; 

 and the same birds that come to a keeper's feet and 

 decline to leave him in September, recognise not his 

 presence in November, when, assisted by a band of 

 white-smocked and much-begaitered myrmidons, he 

 turns them out scientifically one by one, possibly over 

 high trees from one side of a broad dingle, to seek 

 safety midst branches higher still on the opposite 

 side, oblivious of the fact that, ere safe haven can be 

 theirs, the gauntlet must be run of such men, perhaps, 

 as Lord de Grey, Lord Berkeley Paget, or the Con- 



