FEEDING IN COVERTS. 55 



about at intervals throughout the winter. What is still 

 better to my mindj is to place their food in huts. A pheasant 

 hut is an open shed, with the roof fixed on four posts, with a 

 pole all round for rafter plate, the rafters of rough poles tied 

 on ^ith withies, thatched first with long faggots tied up 

 with three or four withies of brushwood with all the leaves 

 on, and allowed to hang down or ' over the rafter plate 

 two feet or thereabouts. The thatch used should be 

 small brushwood, reeds, or straw. An open trellis floor 

 of poles should be raised two feet from the ground, and 

 on this the corn in straw should be laid for the pheasants to 

 help themselves. In these huts the pheasants find shelter, 

 comfort, and cover in rough, wintry, and severe weather. 

 Care should be taken to have plenty of dry dust on the floor 

 underneath for the pheasants to bask in. This is a most 

 essential provision — quite as much so for pheasants as for our 

 poultry — for it is quite as natural for them to dust to clean 

 themselves. It is a fact within easy observation how the 

 pheasant searches out the base of an old dry, dusty pollard 

 tree or hedge bank to bask in the dust. Besides, every 

 grain of corn that falls through the open feeding floor is 

 searched for and found in this dust. Underneath and on the 

 dusty floor is a safe and convenient place, sheltered from 

 severe frost, &c., to receive any other kind of food, such as 

 refuse potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, mangolds, swede 

 turnips, cabbage, Spanish chesnuts, acorns, beechnuts, a 

 few raisins, Indian corn, or anything else you wish the 

 pheasants to have. Such changes of food cast about 

 their feeding sheds are sure to secure them keeping 

 pretty well to covert, particularly if they have water 

 at hand. I have seen large expenditures for well digging 

 or for the conveyance of water by ram and pipes from 

 some stream at a distance; but the best and simplest 

 plan to keep up a general supply of water for the season 

 the pheasant is in covert, is certainly the shallow catch- 

 pool system. In my humble opinion, it is the most 



