4, NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHHASANTS. ' 
autumn on the under side of the leaves. These are galls caused by the presence of 
the eggs of several species of cynips or gall-fly, which may be reared from the 
spangles if they are collected in the autumn, and kept in a cool and rather moist 
atmosphere during the winter. About the fall of the leaf these spangles begin to 
lose their flat mushroom-like form and red hirsute appearance, and become by 
degrees raised or bossed towards the middle, in consequence of the growth of the 
enclosed grub, which now becomes visible when the spangle is cut open. The 
perfect insect makes its appearance in April and May. Some few years since Mr. 
R. Carr Ellison published the following account of their being eagerly sought after 
and devoured by pheasants in a wild state:—“ Just before the fall of the oak-leaf 
these spangles (or the greater part of them) become detached from it, and are 
scattered upon the ground under the trees in great profusion. Our pheasants delight 
in picking them up, especially from the surface of walks and roads, where they are 
most easily found. But, as they are quite visible even to human eyes, among the 
wet but undecayed leaves beneath the oaks, wherever. pheasants have been turning 
them up, a store of winter food is evidently provided by these minute and dormant 
insects with their vegetable incasement, in addition to the earthworms, slugs, &c., 
which induce the pheasants to forage so industriously, by scratching up the layers 
of damp leaves in incipient decay which cover the woodland soil in winter. Not 
only have we found the spangles plentifully in the crops of pheasants that have 
been shot, but, on presenting leaves covered with them to the common and to the 
gold pheasants in confinement, we observed the birds to pick them up without a 
moment’s hesitation, and to look eagerly for more.”’ 
The value of pheasants to the agriculturist is scarcely sufficiently appreciated ; 
the birds destroy enormous numbers of injurious insects—upwards of twelve hundred 
wireworms have been taken out of the crop of a pheasant; and if this number was 
consumed at a single meal, the total destroyed must be almost incredible. There is 
no doubt that insects are preferred to grain, one pheasant shot at the close of the 
shooting season had in its crop 726 wireworms, one acorn, one snail, nine berries, 
and three grains of wheat. Mr. F. Bond states that he took out of the crop of a 
pheasant 440 grubs of the crane fly. As another instance of their insectivorous 
character may be mentioned the complaint of Mr. Charles. Waterton, that they had 
extirpated the grasshoppers from Walton Park. 
Like their allies, the domestic fowls, pheasants are occasionally carnivorous in 
their appetites. A correspondent writes: “This morning my keeper brought me a 
pied cock pheasant, found dead, but still warm, in some standing barley. The bird 
was in finest condition, and showed no marks whatever, when plucked, of a violent 
death. On searching the gullet I extracted a short-tailed field mouse, which had 
doubtless caused death by strangulation. May not such a fact account for what is 
often mysterious in the loss of healthy pheasants ?”? The Hon. and Rey. C. Bathurst, 
