THE PHEASANT 285 



are pushed forward on their feet, the beaters must 

 not get too close to the running birds. Pheasants can 

 be driven anywhere if kept on their feet. If there is 

 a danger of too much squashing together, or a 

 threatened flush, the beaters must be halted. As the 

 beaters advance, all thick cover must be properly 

 beaten, especially bramble bushes. Beaters have a 

 habit of neglecting these from fear of injuring their 

 clothes. Every beater should therefore wear a smock 

 and gaiters. In driving the birds from the main 

 covert, the beaters stop about one hundred and fifty 

 yards from the end of the covert, which should be 

 quite open, and begin to make a great noise ; this drives 

 the birds across the open space to the detached covert, 

 and they are now ready to be flushed. Stops are 

 placed around the detached covert, each man being 

 ordered to beat two sticks together to prevent birds 

 collecting in his vicinity, and for his own safety. Guns 

 are placed in single or double rows, as desired, in the 

 space between the two coverts not nearer than eighty 

 yards to the detached covert and the flushing begins 

 by a keeper entering the clump and putting up birds 

 one by one or two or three at a time. After this has 

 gone on for some time, all the beaters enter, and, 

 moving slowly across the covert, drive out the birds, 

 which, passing over the guns, take their height pretty 

 much at the level of the trees of the home covert, from 

 which they had been beaten. A modification of this 

 plan is for some of the beaters, after leaving the main 



