THE GOLDEN PHEASANT. 209 



were hatched, and until they became acquainted with the 

 call of the hen. When I first hegan to rear young pheasants 

 I could not at all account for their seemingly foolish manner- 

 for the first two or three days after being hatched; they 

 would run gaping about without appearing to notice the hen 

 or her calls to them to come for food. The reason of this I 

 afterwards believed to have been owing to their ignorance of 

 the language of their foster-mother, which it took some time 

 for them to understand ; during this process it is necessary to 

 keep them confined within the frame before their coops, as,, 

 were they to wander a few yards from the hen, they would 

 not heed her call, and would inevitably perish. 



When three or four weeks old, it is necessary, if reared for 

 the aviary, to pinion them, which is done by cutting off rather 

 more than the first joint of the wing, having previously, by 

 means of a needle and thread, inserted close to the small 

 wing-bone, and brought round the large one, just within the 

 skin, taking up the main blood-vessels ; the piece of the wing 

 is then chopped off on a block. There is no loss of blood, and 

 I never could observe that the birds seemed to suffer in the 

 slightest degree afterwards, although the operation I daresay 

 was painful enough. My reason for taking off rather more 

 than the first joint of the wing was because I found that if 

 only the first joint was taken off, the birds were always able, 

 when grown up, to get out of the aviary, which was about 

 12ft. high, and I found it thus requisite to take off so much 

 as to render them incapable of any attempt at flying ; but 

 I left enough remaining to enable them to reach their 

 roosting-place at night. I furnished them with a kind 

 of ladder by nailing cross pieces of wood on a long piece 

 about 3in. wide, and which they very soon learned to walk 

 up and down with facility. One aviary in which I kept 

 some had a back wall to it covered with old ivy, and they 

 preferred roosting in this; indeed, I always found that, 

 although during a wet day those which were at liberty took 

 shelter under a roof, yet at night they would not do so, but 



p 



