120 PRACTICAL PHEASANT REARING. 



suppose (we have frequently here set eggs up till 

 July 7, and succeeded in doing very fairly well with 

 them) do not fall into the usual mistake of putting 

 them to grow up on the same field from which you 

 have just removed the earlier broods ; give them an 

 extra chance, which they badly want, in the shape of 

 a fresh bit of ground. The first birds will have 

 exhausted all the insect life and goodness to be got 

 out of the meadow, and the second lot will have to 

 put up with the old droppings, and general staleness 

 and exhaustion of the ground. 



You take a vast deal of trouble to secure nice 

 ground and every advantage for the early poults, 

 that are in reality more favoured by nature and the 

 date of their birth than the later hatches, which require 

 decidedly more attention, and every chance you can 

 give them. 



I print a cutting which, as it has interested me, 

 may prove interesting also to my readers, relative 

 to the old English pheasant ; it is from Mr Home, of 

 Hereford : 



" It has long been my desire to re-introduce 

 the true Phasianus colchicus. The bird now known 

 as our common pheasant is a very different bird from 

 what it was when first brought to this country between 

 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; changed by 

 climatic influence and the admixture of Chinese, or 

 ringnecks, and other varieties, it has become quite 

 different from the original stock, and, in fact, hardly 



