THE DISEASES OF PHEASANTS. 87 
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or rain water) appears to promise the best results, but it should not be forgotten 
that this is apt to stain the fingers of the operator. 
It not unfrequently happens that large numbers of young pheasants die of 
mysterious ailments, the causes of which are very difficult to determine. When 
they have been ascertained, they have usually been traced to some injurious 
substances that have been taken as food. In one case that came under my 
notice, the destructive agent was sheep’s wool. A correspondent wrote, stating that 
during six weeks he lost upwards of 300 young pheasants from no apparent cause, 
but that subsequently he received a letter from his gamekeeper, who wrote :—“ I 
have found out the cause of the pheasants dying. The farmer kept his sheep so 
long upon that piece of ground before I had the use of it, that the sheep lost 
a lot of wool, and my young birds have swallowed it. I have opened forty or 
fifty young birds, and found the gizzards quite full of wool, and the passage 
stopped up, so that food could not pass. I send you four pieces of wool, which I 
have taken from the gizzards of four different birds. I never had a better lot of 
young birds. They hatched off strong and well, and now I have lost nearly all of 
~ them.” ; 
It is very probable that the sheep might have been dressed with some 
arsenical or other poisonous “dip” or “wash,” which would remain on the wool 
and prove fatal to the young birds. 
With regard to injurious substances taken as food, it is unquestionable that 
pheasants are sometimes poisoned by yew. Prof. R. V. Tuson writes:—*One of 
a number of pheasants, suspected to have been poisoned, was sent to me for 
analysis. On examining the alimentary canal and its contents for the mineral and 
vegetable substances most commonly used in malicious poisoning, none were detected; 
but in the craw of the bird I discovered yew leaves. Comminuted leaves of the 
same noxious plant were also found in the gizzard, and by its odour, &e., distinct 
evidences of its existence in the intestines were likewise obtained. I reported 
that, in my opinion, the bird was killed through the eating of yew leaves. I have 
never before met with, or even heard of, an instance in which yew has proved 
fatal to birds.” It is probable that it may be only in exceptional instances that 
the birds feed upon the leaves, and that this may account for the fact that 
pheasants are often kept without injury in coverts abounding with yews. 
The blossoms of some species of firs have been supposed to be fatal to the 
young birds. A correspondent wrote to me as follows:—‘“ Having hatched out 
three lots of pheasants, the hens in the coops and the young birds were put under 
some high fir trees, with a very dry piece of mossy turf underneath. There was 
rather a wet day soon after the birds were put out, and in about forty-eight hours 
afterwards the young pheasants began to die with what the keeper considered 
cramp. They appeared to lose the use of their legs, seemed paralysed, and tumbled 
