86 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



delaying the crop that the farmer gets a much reduced price 

 for his product. Mr. Leslie A. Bull of Lexington, who supplies 

 one of the large restaurants in Boston with sweet corn, asserts 

 that the pheasants ruined his contract for the year, as he was 

 obliged to plant four times. He put up scarecrows and even 

 poisoned his seed corn, but his farming operations were abso- 

 lutely brought to a standstill by the depredations of the pheas- 

 ants. Again, pheasants have been reported as destructive to 

 potatoes and peas. Mr. W. F. Mansfield of Medford, Massa- 

 chusetts, says that some of his potato rows were dug up by 

 these birds for a distance of 6 or 8 feet. The tubers were 

 mostly pecked a little, but in some cases all but the skin was 

 eaten. Several years ago my neighbor at Wareham, Mr. Alden 

 Maxim, lost about 2 bushels of potatoes, and reported that he 

 actually saw pheasants eat them. I was unable to verify this 

 by my own observations, and have not heard such a complaint 

 again until this year. Any definite information on this subject 

 will be gratefully received by this office. This season, for the 

 first time, complaints were received that pheasants were strip- 

 ping the buds from fruit trees. Mr. George S. Knapp of Groton 

 wrote to Secretary Wheeler, of the State Board of Agriculture, 

 on February 24, 1917, saying that pheasants had stripped 

 practically all the buds from some apple trees, except • the 

 terminal ones on some slim perpendicular shoots out of their 

 reach. I requested Mr. William P. Wharton, who lives in Groton, 

 to make some observations in the matter, and he did so, but 

 failed to find the pheasants actually destroying the buds, al- 

 though he saw pheasants near the orchard. Mr. Knapp asserts 

 that he saw the birds at work on the buds many times during 

 the season. He says that the pheasants were seen budding the 

 trees when the ground was well covered with snow, but when 

 it was partly bare they fed more on seeds and frozen apples. 

 He avers that some of the neighbors have had similar trouble. 

 Mr. E. A. Furbush of West Acton wrote on March 23 that 

 pheasants were then destroying buds on his apple trees. Any 

 one who has actually observed this habit will confer a favor by 

 communicating the facts to me at the State Board of Agricul- 

 ture, Room 136, State House, Boston, Massachusetts. 



Under the law a farmer has the right to shoot any pheasant 



