THE REARED PHEASANT 261 



every well-regulated game preserve, eggs will be 

 produced under natural conditions, and when the 

 keeper can obtain a supply of eggs from such a 

 source, he ought with good management to have 

 vastly superior birds to the man who rears 

 exclusively from aviary produced eggs. 



This seems sound in theory, but like 

 many other attractive theories cannot bear 

 the cold light of hard fact. The majority 

 of experienced pheasant rearers have found 

 that the eggs from pen, aviary or approved 

 game-farm can be implicitly relied on to 

 produce birds, if not 'vastly superior,' 

 then at least good enough for all the 

 practical purposes of sport, and nothing 

 would induce them to abandon their 

 proved methods, in favour of a system, 

 necessarily involving far more time and 

 trouble to carry out, and in no small 

 degree affecting the clock-work regularity 

 of procedure which gives to pheasant 

 rearing an attraction denied to almost 

 every other form of game preservation — 

 the fair certainty of success to him who 

 has deserved it. 



