4 NATUEAL HISTORY OP THE PHEASANTS. 



autumn on the under side of the leaves. These are galls caused hy the presence of 

 the eggs of several species of cynips or gall-fly, which may be reared from the 

 spangles if they are collected in the autumn, and kept in a cool and rather moist 

 atmosphere during the winter. About the fall of the leaf these spangles begin to 

 lose their flat mushroom-like form and red hirsute appearance, and become by 

 degrees raised or bossed towards the middle, in consequence of the growth of the 

 enclosed grub, which now becomes visible when the spangle is out open. The 

 perfect insect makes its appearance in April and May. Some few years since Mr. 

 R. Oarr Ellison published the following account of their being eagerly sought after 

 and devoured by pheasants in a wild state : — " Just before the fall of the oak-leaf 

 these spangles (or the^ greater part of them) become detached from it, and are 

 scattered upon the ground under the trees in great profusion. Our pheasants delight 

 in picking them up, especially from the surface of walks and roads, where they are 

 most easily found. But, as they are quite visible even to human eyes, among the 

 wet but undecayed leaves beneath the oaks, wherever pheasants have been turning 

 them up, a store of winter food is evidently provided by these minute and dormant 

 insects with their vegetable incasement, in addition to the earthworms, slugs, &c., 

 which induce the pheasants to forage so industriously, by scratching up the layers 

 of damp leaves in incipient decay which cover the woodland soil in winter. Not 

 only have we found the spangles plentifully in the crops of pheasants that have 

 been shot, but, on presenting leaves covered with them to the common and to the 

 gold pheasants in confinement, we observed the birds to pick them up without a 

 moment's hesitation, and to look eagerly for more." 



The value of pheasants to the agriculturist is scarcely sufficiently appreciated ; 

 the birds destroy enormous numbers of injurious insects — upwards of twelve hundred 

 wireworms have been taken out of the crop of a pheasant ; and if this number was 

 consumed at a single meal, the total destroyed niust be almost incredible. There is 

 no doubt that insects are preferred to grain, one pheasant shot at the close of the 

 shooting season had in its crop 726 wireworms, one acorn, one snaU, nine berries, 

 and three grains of wheat. Mr. P. Bond states that he took out of the crop of a 

 pheasant 440 grubs of the crane fly. As another instance of their insectivorous 

 character may be mentioned the complaint of Mr. Charles "Waterton, that they had 

 extirpated the grasshoppers from Walton Park, 



Like their allies, the domestic fowls, pheasants are occasionally carnivorous in 

 their appetites. A correspondent writes : " This morning my keeper brought me a 

 pied cock pheasant, found dead, but still warm, in some standing barley. The bird 

 was in finest condition, Tand showed no marks whatever, when plucked, of a violent 

 death. On searching the* gullet I extracted a short-tailed field mouse, which had 

 doubtless caused death by strangulation. May not such a fact account for what is 

 often mysterious in the loss of healthy pheasants ? " The Hon. and E/Cv. C. Bathurst, 



