254 PHEASANTS 



hint that nature could give is a steady 

 reduction in the volume of insect life, and 

 often a complete dearth of those very 

 forms of life, the abundance of which go 

 so far to make a heavy head of game 

 possible. Soon will the sluggard have to 

 look elsewhere for an incentive to industry, 

 for the busy ant is being swept away 

 before a host of hungry persecutors ; 

 already the old need not fear the burden 

 of the grasshopper, for his voice is no 

 longer heard in the land. 1 



Thanks to the prodigious fertility of the 

 insect, all that such ground requires is an 

 occasional rest for recuperation, and this 

 rest cure is exactly what the adoption of 

 what we may term the root and branch 

 policy with the pheasants ensures. 



The proposition is that, wherever a 

 heavy stock both of partridges and 

 pheasants is desired, and any suspicions of 



1 The sentence touched the ear, and was allowed to 

 stand. Yet in truth, an analogy is barely tolerable, for the 

 grasshopper of Ecclesiastes must have been the cicada, 

 whose voice is only too familiar to dwellers in the East, 

 and on whom the sturdier race of grasshoppers with which 

 we are more familiar, prey with ferocity. 



