12 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP THE PHEASANTS. 



Maroli, as they sit twenty-five days, and they do not very often lay (only every 

 other day, at least at the commencement)." Other cases earlier hy three or four 

 days than this instance have been recorded. The Eev. Gr. C. Green, of Modbury, 

 Devon, writes : " On Sunday, April 18, 1875, as my curate was returning from 

 taking the duty in a neighbouring church, a hen pheasant started from the roadside 

 hedge close to the town, and fluttered before him. While watching her movements 

 he saw eleven young pheasants, apparently newly hatched, fluttering in the hedge, 

 and at the edge of a pond close by. They soon scrambled into some cover, and the 

 mother bird flew off to rejoin them from another quarter. I understand, from 

 inquiry, that this is not a solitary instance of such an early brood of pheasants in 

 South Devon." 



On the other hand, examples of nests deferred until very late in the year are 

 not unknown. Mr. W. W. Blest, of Biddenden, near Staplehurst, writes: "Whilst 

 partridge shooting on the 3rd of September, 1874, we disturbed a sitting pheasant, 

 the nest containing twelve eggs. We often hear of the early nesting of game birds, 

 but rarely so late in the season." In October, 1869, Mr. Walter R. Tyrell, of 

 Plashwood, near Stowmarket, forwarded to me a young pheasant, with the following 

 letter : " When pheasant shooting with some friends yesterday, the 15th inst., in this 

 neighbourhood, one of the beaters picked up dead, in a path in the wood we were 

 in, a very young chick pheasant ; it could not have been hatched more than a week. 

 My keeper tells me he has found them (but very rarely) as young in September. 

 I forward the young chick to your office, in prder that you may inspect it." I 

 carefully, examined the young bird, which was not more than two or three days 

 old. These late-hatched birds were in all probability the produce of the second laying 

 during the same season. 



The artificial state in which these birds exist, as supplied with nutritive food 

 and protected in our coverts and preserves, leads to other departures from their 

 natural conditions. Thus variations of plumage and size are much more frequent 

 and more marked than would occur in the case of birds in a perfectly wild state. 

 In some instances the size is very greatly increased. Hen pheasants usually weigh 

 from two pounds to two pounds and a quarter, whilst the usual weight of cock 

 pheasants is from about three pounds to three pounds and a half, but Mr. Yarrell, 

 in his "History of British Birds," mentions two unusually large; he says "The 

 lighter bird of the two just turned the scale against four and a half pounds; the 

 other took the scale down at once. The weights were accurately ascertained, in the 

 presence of several friends, to decide a wager of which I was myself the loser." 

 One of five pounds and half an ounce was sent me by Mr. Oarr, of the Strand, 

 this was a last year's bird of the common species. And in 1859 one bird, of the 

 enormous weight of five pounds and three quarters, was sent by Mr. Akroyd, of 

 Boddington Park, Nantwioh, to Mr. Shaw, of Shrewsbury, for preservation. Mr. 



