FEEDING IN COVERTS. 35 
should be small brushwood, reeds, or straw., An open trellis floor of poles should 
be raised two feet from the ground, and on this the corn in straw should be laid 
for the pheasants to help themselves. In these huts the pheasants find shelter, 
comfort, and cover in rough, wintry, and severe weather. Care should be taken to 
have plenty of dry dust on the floor underneath for the pheasants to bask in. This 
is a most essential provision—quite as much so for pheasants as for our poultry— 
for it is quite as natural for them to dust to clean themselves. It is a fact within 
easy observation how the pheasant searches out the base of an old dry, dusty, pollard 
tree or hedge bank to bask in the dust. Besides, every grain of corn that falls 
through the open feeding floor is searched for and found in this dust.’ Underneath 
and on the dusty floor is a safe and convenient place, sheltered from severe frost, 
&e., to receive any other kind of food, such as refuse potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, 
mangolds, swede turnips, cabbage, Spanish chesnuts, acorns, beechnuts, a few raisins, 
Indian corn, or anything else you wish the pheasants to have. Such changes of food 
cast about their feeding sheds are sure to secure them keeping pretty well to covert, 
particularly if they have water at hand. I have seen large expenditures for well 
digging or for the conveyance of water by ram and pipes from some stream at a 
distance; but the best and simplest plan to keep up a general supply of water for 
the season the pheasant is in covert, is certainly the shallow catchpool system. In 
my humble opinion, it is the most natural, convenient, and inexpensive plan of all 
I have seen or had anything to do with in my time. I will explain what I mean 
by catchpools: Choose any little slope or valley in high and dry coverts where 
some command may be had of the surrounding surface water after rain; scoop out 
a hole in the earth’s surface in the shape of a spoon or bowl, sloping gradually all 
round to the centre and deepest part, which need not be deeper than from eighteen 
inches to three feet, according to width and length; the edges, to admit the water 
running into it freely, must be kept a little under the earth’s natural surface. Then 
puddle the whole of its face with six inches of well-wrought clay, paving it with 
bricks laid flat, and giving it all over a little coat of Portland cement. Thus you 
have a first-class and lasting catchpit to hold water most of the year, indeed, the 
whole season. Pheasants are expected to remain in covert for food and safety from 
September to February, and then there is certainly always plenty of water. After 
February the pheasant likes to go further away, and, soon after the gun is with- 
drawn, is pretty sure to get distributed about in search of insects and various roots. 
Pheasants rove about quietly during their breeding season, but little is seen or heard 
of them after April till corn harvest, as they live a quiet, secluded life through 
summer. I have made catchpools by casing them only with puddled clay. One 
disadvantage of this is, in a long dry time the water gets low, and the clay sides 
becoming exposed, contract, crack, and. allow the water to run to waste if they are 
not looked to when rain does come. There is also another way in which I have had 
F 2 
