DATE OF LAYING. 17 



pheasant leading about a brood of young ones, whose mother 

 has evidently come to grief. A more attentive and careful 

 nurse could not be than this cock. He boldly follows his 

 young charge on the lawns and to other places where he never 

 ventured before, finds them food, and stands sentry over them 

 with untiring perseverance. They are thriving so well under 

 his care and growing so fast, that they will soon be able to 

 shift for themselves." 



The same singular occurrence has also taken place in an 

 aviary. Lord Willoughby de Broke some time since published 

 the following letter : " I have an aviary in which there is a 

 cock pheasant and four or five hens of the Chinese breed ; at 

 the beginning of the laying season the cock scraped a hole in 

 the sand, in which the hens laid four eggs ; he then collected 

 a quantity of loose sticks, formed a perfect nest and began to 

 sit ; he sat most patiently, seldom leaving the nest till the 

 eggs were chipped, when the keeper, afraid of his killing 

 them, took them from him, and placed them under a hen 

 pheasant who was sitting on bad eggs ; they were hatched the 

 next day, and the young birds are now doing well." 



Pheasants usually commence to lay in this country in 

 April or May, the date varying somewhat with the season and 

 the latitude ; but, in consequence of the artificial state in 

 which they are kept in preserves, and the superabundance of 

 food with which they are supplied, the production of eggs, as 

 in domesticated fowls often takes place at most irregular 

 periods. Many instances are recorded of per;fect eggs being 

 found in the oviducts of pheasants shot during the months of 

 December and January. For example. Sir D. W. Legard, 

 writing from Granton, Yorkshire, on the 27th of December, 

 1 864, said : " At the conclusion of a day's covert shooting last 

 Tuesday, a hen pheasant, which had been killed, was 

 discovered by a keeper to have a lump of some hard sub- 

 stance in her ; he opened her in my presence, when, to my 

 astonishment, he extracted an egg perfectly formed, shelled, 

 and apparently ready to be laid; it was of the usual size, 



c 



