CH. 11.] HATCHING BY PHEASANTS AND HENS. 169 
The process of hatching appears to occupy a 
much shorter time when the sitting mother is a 
Pheasant, than when the eggs have been put 
under a Common Fowl. Should you have ex- 
amined a Pheasant’s nest in the morning, and 
found none of the eggs pecked, you may, on re- 
turning to it the same afternoon or evening, find 
every single one hatched and the young birds 
clear off. Under a Common Fowl hatching a clutch 
of Pheasants’ eggs is a work of generally from 
thirty-six to forty-eight hours, and then, in most 
cases, one or two of the number will prove to be 
addled or fail to be drawn out. The only way 
in which I can account for this delay in the 
hatching, is by supposing the heat of the Phea- 
sant to be more regularly diffused than that of 
the Fowl. The reason why the Pheasant generally 
succeeds in bringing to maturity a larger propor- 
tion of her eggs than the Fowl, may be that her 
own are turned by herself, whilst those intrusted 
to the Fowl are turned by the keeper. 
Two Pheasants’ nests have been this year (1859) 
found by a friend’s keeper, a large proportion of 
the eggs in which were smaller than any of the 
kind that had ever come under my notice, being 
about the size of those of Magpies’. One contained 
