714 PHEASANT 



Henry I. to the Abbot of Amesbury to kill Hares and Pheasants, and 

 from the price at which the latter are reckoned, in various documents 

 that have come down to us, we may conclude that they were not 

 very abundant for some centuries, and also that they were occasion- 

 ally artificially reared and fattened, as appears from Upton, 1 who 

 wrote about the middle of the 15th century, while Henry VIII. 

 seems from his privy purse expenses to have had in his household 

 in 1532 a French priest as a regular "fesaunt breder," and in the 

 accounts of the Kytsons of Hengrave in Suffolk for 1607 mention is 

 made of wheat to feed Pheasants, Partridges and Quails. 



Within recent years the practice of bringing up Pheasants by 

 hand has been extensively followed, and the numbers so reared 

 vastly exceed those that are bred at large. The eggs are collected 

 from birds that are either running wild or kept in a mew, 2 and are 

 placed under domestic Hens; but, though these prove most 

 attentive foster-mothers, much additional care on the part of their 

 keepers is needed to ensure the arrival at maturity of the poults ; for, 

 being necessarily crowded in a comparatively small space, they are 

 subject to several diseases which often carry off a large proportion, 

 to say nothing of the risk they run by not being provided with 

 proper food, or by meeting an early death from various predatory 

 animals attracted by the assemblage of so many helpless victims. As 

 they advance in age the young Pheasants readily take to a wild 

 life, and indeed can only be kept from wandering in every direction 

 by being plentifully supplied with food, which has to be scattered 

 for them in the coverts in which it is desired that they should stay. 

 Of the proportion of Pheasants artificially bred that " come to the 

 gun " when the shooting-season arrives it is impossible to form any 

 estimate, for it would seem to vary enormously, not only irregularly 

 according to the weather, but regularly according to the district. 

 In the eastern counties of England, and some other favourable 

 localities, perhaps three-fourths of those that are hatched may be 

 satisfactorily accounted for ; but in many of the western counties, 

 though they are the objects of equally unremitting or even greater 

 care, it would seem that more than half of the number that live to 

 grow their feathers disappear inexplicably before the coverts are 

 beaten. The various effects of the modern system of Pheasant- 

 breeding and Pheasant-shooting need here be treated but briefly. 

 It is commonly condemned as giving encouragement to poaching, 

 and, especially under ignorant management, as substituting slaughter 

 for sport. Undoubtedly there is much to be said on this score ; 

 but in reply to the first objection it has been urged that as a rule 



1 In his De studio militari (not printed till 1654) he states (p. 195) that the 

 Pheasant was brought from the East by "Palladius ancorista." 



2 In 1883, 134,000 Pheasants' eggs were sold from one estate in Suffolk, 

 and 101,000 in 1893, while 9700 birds were killed upon it. 



