104 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



hens iu confinement is gveatly in excess of that producetl by 

 them in a wild state, sometimes as many as twenty-five or 

 thn-ty being hiid by one hen. This extreme prolificacy 

 tends to exhaust the Ijirds, and it will be found m(jst 

 advantageous to turn them out when they have finished 

 laying, and to supply their places by young poults. 



It not infrec|uently happens that a greater number of egtrs 

 are rerpured for hatching- under farmyard hens than are pjro- 

 duced by the birds in the pheasantries ; in such cases the 

 surpbis eggs in the nests of tlie wild birds mav be ad- 

 vantageously collected. This, however, mav be done in a 

 right or a wrong way. Tkev shmild Ije taken before the hen 

 pheasant beg'ins to sit ; and if removed oue at a time every 

 other day as the bird is laying, they are cei'tain not to have 

 been partly hatched. 



lliehard Jeffries, in a most gr;i.])hic article on the pleasures 

 of pheasant rearing, describing the gathering of the eggs, 

 truly says : "Unfortunately nothing is more easy to find than 

 a pheasant's nest. Like a cockney looking for a home in the 

 suburbs, the hen pheasant seems to pi'efer a lively situation 

 near a thoroughfare, with a good \-ie\v <^f anytliing that mav 

 be going on. It needs no great [)r;u'tice to catch the glance 

 of the bright Ijeady eye among the roots of the roadside 

 hedgerow, or t(j distinguish the grey mottled ]iliimage among 

 the grass and nettles m the cbfcli below. Look under that 

 heap of fallen boughs, and as likely as not there are the 

 green-grey eggs (b-oppod under the very outermost, where 

 there is scarcely a ])ret(unje to cover, nlthough, had she taken 

 the tronl^le to force her way one half-yard further, the hen 

 might have laid them safe out (.)f sight of all but ground 

 vermin. So by dint of ])oking aljout anumi;" the grass and 

 the branches and bramlile,^, by looking under tnrze bushes 

 and in hedgerows, and in the cavities f(u-med at the foot of 

 tree trunks, you may come upon a gixjd nnnd)er of nests m 

 the aftern(.)on, should hirds be t(jlerably plentiful. Verv 

 likely indeed you have found too many eggs to be accommo- 



