PHEASANTS 285 



Mr. Tegetmeier, in his book on Pheasants, has collected 

 evidence from all quarters, and he gives many good reasons 

 for not reducing the cocks below a proportion of one to three 

 hens. Mr. Millard has lately expressed very strong views 

 against leaving fewer than eight hens to one wild cock. But 

 perhaps Mr. Millard's life, in connection with game-meal, is not 

 precisely that which would endow him with the most reliable 

 information from all directions. Be this as it may, it is within 

 the experience of the author that when one cock to five hens 

 has been his accomplished aim, he has had the satisfaction of 

 seeing straying pheasants in every part of an estate all breeding 

 good broods, but the disappointment of knowing that every 

 cock had left the home covert and that many hens were 

 laying infertile eggs there. Probably there are limits to the 

 distance a hen bird will go to the crow of a cock. Here was 

 a case in which not one egg per cent, was good in the covert, 

 but out in the fields a mile or two away it was quite different. 

 Every egg was fertile and produced its chick. 



The coverts are not really natural places for pheasants to 

 lay in, any more than they are for partridges. Generally, when 

 pheasants begin to lay the fields have too little covert to tempt 

 them to make nests in the open. Then they resort to the 

 hedgerows, and when these are scarce, as they are in the 

 stone wall districts, many more birds lay in the coverts than 

 would do so if there was vegetation outside. However, in a 

 stone wall and partridge country, the author has seen as many 

 pheasants' as partridges' nests mown out of the Italian rye grass 

 and clover-fields. But these were late birds, because this mow- 

 ing rarely begins before June i5th, and many pheasants have 

 hatched out before then. If it could be planned that all the 

 pheasants left could be prevented from straying, then fewer 

 cocks would possibly do, and this might occur in a grass country. 

 But in a corn district the birds will stray, and when half the 

 cocks have departed, as they will with one or two hens to each, 

 those left would not have the proportion of hens aimed at ; but 

 where three hens were attempted to be left to each cock, 

 and two of them went away with each of half the males, the 



