COMMON PHEASANT. 313 



They are very partial also to making their nest and laying 

 their eggs in moist and thick clover bottoms, where they 

 are very likely to be exposed and mowed out, and it is a 

 good practice with gamekeepers to hunt such favourite 

 grounds just before and at the commencement of the laying 

 season, to disturb the birds continually in these spots, and 

 thus induce them to go to nest in places where their na- 

 tural process is less likely to be interfered with. To keep 

 up a stock of Pheasants, several are kept all the year in 

 pens, where many eggs are produced, but as the females 

 will seldom sit steadily in confinement, these eggs, with 

 others found by mowers, are hatched and reared by com- 

 mon hens of small size, which are generally found to be the 

 best nurses. The young birds require to be carefully fed 

 with ants' eggs, grits, maggots of flesh-flies, &c. till they 

 are able to take coarser food, or old enough to go to 

 stubble and provide for themselves. 



The Pheasant, says Mr. Selby, " like most of the galli- 

 naceous tribe, is very liable, especially in a state of confine- 

 ment, to a disease called the gapes, so destructive to broods 

 of chickens and young turkeys in particular situations. It 

 is occasioned by an intestinal worm of the genus Fasciola, 

 which, lodging in the trachea, adheres by a kind of sucker 

 to its internal membrane, and causes death by suffocation 

 from the inflamed state of the part. Many recipes for the 

 cure of this malady have been suggested, but none of them 

 seem to be effectual except the one recommended by Mon- 

 tagu, in the Supplement to his Ornithological Dictionary, 

 under the article Pheasant, namely, fumigation by to- 

 bacco, found to be an infallible specific when administered 

 with due care and attention." The young birds are put 

 into a wooden box, into which the fumes of tobacco are 

 blown by means of a common tobacco-pipe : any state 



