JEFFRIES ON PHEASANT REARING. 101 



dated under the sitting hens at your disposal. Some must be 

 left, while other brood mdthers are sought. Whether on 

 your second visit you find those you left, as you left them, 

 depends greatly upon circumstances. If you have a profusion 

 of rooks about your place, the chances are much against it. 

 For those omnivorous gluttons have as decided a partiality 

 for pheasant eggs as any ball-going gourmand for those of 

 the plover. They have overrun your woods. They sit swing- 

 ing and cawing on each projecting bough that commands a 

 prospect. They walk the slopes of your fields, one eye closely 

 rscanning the soil for insects, the other sweeping all the points 

 of the compass. Nothing escapes their observation. When 

 they see you out for an object they follow you and mark each 

 movement. We have very little doubt they speedily learn to 

 .suspect your intention, and when they see you stoop in a 

 likely spot, they fly down to institute an investigation when- 

 ever your back is turned. In no other way can we possibly 

 account for the wholesale wreck of eggs that had heen spared 

 and sat upon until you visited them in your walk. And if you 

 •doubt who are the culprits, try the ordeal by taste, and strych- 

 nine a nestful of eggs. You will find the bodies of the 

 black delinquents strewed round the fragments of the 

 shells. 



" Nothing can be prettier than the broods of young 

 pheasants as they are hatched off, tame as chickens — although 

 more graceful and active — running from the shell, and be- 

 ;ginning forthwith to peck about for a living. Unfortunately 

 there are other members of the animated creation who watch 

 their growth and their movements with even keener and more 

 immediate interest than yourself. For some four months to 

 come you mean neither to shoot nor eat your confiding 

 proteges; but they are surrounded by sharp-set carnivora 

 who propose themselves that pleasure on the earliest possible 

 ■opportunity. We do not assert that those nuisances the 

 rooks are dangerous in this stage of the pheasant breeding, 

 .although we should deem it impru'dent to trust them too far. 



