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MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN CONFINEMENT (CONTINUED). 
LAYING AND HATCHING. 
®  F the laying in aviaries there is but little to be said, The birds 
» er} usually drop their eggs about at random, consequently they should 
2 be looked after, and collected frequently, so as to prevent as far 
@ as possible their being broken, which is almost certain to establish 
® the destructive habit of egg eating. Sometimes, however, hen 
pheasants will take to concealed nests, and instances are not 
unknown of their sitting and hatching successfully in confinement. 
correspondent states: “In 1852 I had a cock and three hens in a 
small place (I will not dignify it by the name of an aviary, for it is 
1 open at the top, and the birds are pinioned or have their wings cut) ; 
hi one of the hens made a nest, and sat and hatched five young ones. 
These, unfortunately, the other pheasants killed directly they came from 
under the mother. In 1853, the same hen sat again on eleven eggs, and hatched 
seven, when I let her out into my small garden, and a better mother I never 
saw; she would allow no strangers to come near her without flying at them. At 
the end of seven weeks, the gapes killed them all. It was a curious sight to see 
the old pheasant make her nest of ivy-leaves and hay, the former of which she 
always used to cover her eggs with when she left her nest, doing so by standing 
on the edge, and throwing the leaves over her back, The same hen sat again 
in 1854.” 
Mr. G. F. Woodrow (Keeper to the Earl of Denbigh, Newnham Paddox, 
Lutterworth), writing on the subject stated: “I have half an acre of young 
plantation inclosed for a pheasantry and open at the top, so that the wild cock 
birds can go in and out. I had over thirty hen pheasants and three cocks, all 
with their wings cut. About ten weeks ago a hen pheasant wanted to sit on the 
last egg that she layed; I took it from her, and disturbed her every day, but she 
persisted in sitting without an egg for more than a week; at last I took pity on 
her, One evening when I had gathered the eggs I put sixteen under her, and she 
