30 MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PEESBRVES. 



Hall:— "This bird has a capacious stomach, and requires much nutriment, while 



its timidity soon causes it to abandon those places which are disturbed. It is fond 



of acorns, beech mast, the berries of the hawthorn, the seeds of the wild rose, and 



the tubers of the Jerusalem artichoke. As long as these, and the corn dropped 



in the harvest, can be procured, the pheasant will do very well. In the spring 



it finds abundance of nourishment in the sprouting leaves of young clover; but 



from the commencement of the new year till the vernal period, their wild food 



affords a very scanty supply, and the bird wiU be exposed to all the evUs of the 



Vagrant Act, unless you can contrive to keep it at home by an artificial supply of 



food. Boiled potatoes (which the pheasant prefers much to those in the raw state) 



and beans are, perhaps, the two most nourishing things that can be offered in the 



depth of winter. Beans in the end are cheaper than all the smaller kinds of grain, 



because the little birds, which usually swarm at the place where pheasants are fed, 



cannot swallow them; and, if you conceal the beans under yew or holly bushes, or 



under the lower branches of the spruce fir tree, they will be out of the way of the 



rooks and ringdoves. About two roods of the thousand-headed cabbage are a most 



valuable acquisition to the pheasant preserve. You sow a few ounces of seed in 



April, and transplant the young plants 2ft. asunder, in the month of June. By 



the time that the harvest is all in, these cabbages wiU afford a most excellent 



aliment to the pheasant, and are particularly serviceable when the ground is deeply 



covered with snow. I often think that pheasants are unintentionally destroyed by 



farmers during the autumnal seed-time. They have a custom of steeping the wheat 



in arsenic water. This must be injurious to birds which pick up the corn remaining 



on the surface of the mould. I sometimes find pheasants, at this period, dead in 



the plantations, and now and then take them up weak and languid, and quite 



unable to fly. I will mention here a Httle robbery by the pheasants, which has 



entirely deprived me of a gratification I used formerly to experience in an evening's 



saunter down the vale. They have completely exterminated the grasshoppers. Eor 



these last fourteen years I have not once heard the voice of this merry summer 



charmer in the party. In order to render useless aU attempts of the nocturnal 



poacher to destroy the pheasants, it is absolutely necessary that a place of security 



should be formed. I know of no position more appropriate than a piece of level 



ground at the bottom of the hUl, bordered by a gentle stream. About three acres 



of this, sowed with whins, and surrounded by a hoUy fence to keep the cattle out, 



would be the very thing. In the centre of it, for the space of one acre, there ought 



to be planted spruce fir trees, about I4ft. asunder. Next to the larch, this species 



of tree is generally preferred by the pheasants for their roosting-place ; and it is 



quite impossible that the poachers can shoot them in these trees. Moreover magpies 



and jays will always resort to them at nightfall; and they never fail to give the 



alarm on the first appearance of an enemy. Many a time has the magpie been of 



