THE PHEASANT. 23 



found to be twenty-four in number, all of full size and perfect, — in 

 addition, were many large insect larvae. Either oats or Indian com 

 being thrown out every morning before the windows of the cottage for 

 pheasants, I had an opportunity of observing their great preference of 

 the former to the latter. After several grains of the Indian corn were 

 picked up hastily, they seemed to stick in the bird's throat and were with 

 much difficulty swallowed. The neck was moved in various directions 

 to accomplish this object, and the eyes were often closed in the effort ; 

 but immediately afterwards, the birds recommenced eating at the grain 

 which had given them such trouble. Yet this grain is small compared 

 with full-sized hazel-nuts. I remarked a pheasant one day in Islay 

 taking the sparrow's place, by picking at horse-dung on the road for 

 undigested oats. The woods here, during the month of January, 

 resounded about sunset with the loud crowing of the cock pheasants 

 then betaking themselves to their nightly roosts. 



It is gratifying to find writers of such enlarged experience and 

 accurate observation as Mr. St. John and Mr. Knox, agreeing upon the 

 subject of the good done by the pheasant to the farm, as more than 

 counterbalancing any injury it may commit. The latter author, in his 

 very agreeably written volume entitled " Ornithological Rambles in 

 Sussex," enters fully and in an interesting manner into the subject, 

 summing up with the verdict that this bird, owing to the great number 

 of injurious insects it destroys, " is rather the friend than the foe of 

 the agriculturist," p. 165. The former author, in his "Tour in 

 Sutherland," vol. ii. p. 217, speaks still more decisively with respect 

 to the pheasant, which he considers in a great degree insectivorous. 

 This whole matter is most fully and justly argued in a pamphlet 

 entitled, " Observations on Game and the Game Laws"* (p. 14-21), 

 in which the author remarks that — " Pheasants [in reasonable num- 

 bers] have in truth been a profitable stock on the ground. They have 

 been subsisting upon weeds and insects injurious to cultivation, and 

 upon other substances not useful to man ; and in return they now 

 furnish man with an article of wholesome and delicate food." p. 20. 



* By J. Burn Murdoch, Esq. (1847). 



