126 PHEASANTS 



— for the most part — only be a negligible 

 quantity where foxes are rigidly and regu- 

 larly preserved, and so the problems of 

 the nesting time are for our purposes 

 more or less identical with those of the 

 rearing -field. This should always be 

 surrounded by a wire fence at least 8 feet 

 in height, the netting kept taut, and the 

 top quarter bent outwards at a sharp 

 angle. With every precaution, the fox 

 will still occasionally effect an entrance, 

 as on a Sussex estate in 1904, when a 

 vixen succeeded in surmounting a wire 

 enclosure 9 feet high, destroying 51 nearly 

 full-grown pheasants in the night.^ As 

 a further -safeguard, the wire should 

 be turned in about a foot underground, 

 which may easily be done by ploughing 

 a single furrow along the line of fence, 

 and treading the sod turned up back over 

 the netting. 



When for any reason the erection of 

 netting is not feasible, alarm guns con- 



' The Natural History of British Game Birds, J. G. 

 Millais. 



