POISONING BY YEW LEAVES. 139 



his possession for some yearSj and had noticed the alteration 

 increasing at each annual moult. A corresponding alteration 

 has been frequently observed in the female of the domestic 

 fowl, and it is not even confined to gallinaceous birds, being" 

 not unfrequent in the domestic duck. That disease of the 

 ovary should cause the formation of feathers totally distinct, 

 not only in colour, but in form, from those previously pro- 

 duced (as is most conspicuously the case of the tippet of the 

 Golden, or tail of the Silver Pheasant) is a very remarkable 

 circumstance, and one that has not yet received a satisfactory 

 physiological explanation. 



It not unfrequently happens that large numbers of young 

 pheasants die of mysterious ailments, the causes of which 

 are very difficult to determine. When they have been 

 ascertained, they have not unfrequently been traced to some 

 injurious substances that have been taken as food. In on© 

 case that came under my notice, the destructive agent was 

 sheep's wool. A correspondent wrote, stating that during' 

 six weeks he lost upwards of 300 young pheasants from no 

 apparent cause, but that subsequently he received a letter 

 from his gamekeeper, who wrote : — " I have found out the 

 cause of the pheasants dying. The farmer kept his sheep 

 so long upon that piece of ground before I had the use of 

 it, that the sheep lost a lot of wool, and my young birds 

 have swallowed it. I have opened ' forty or fifty young 

 birds, and found the gizzards quite full of wool, and the 

 passage stopped up, so that food could not pass. I send 

 you four pieces of wool, which I have taken from the gizzards 

 of four different birds. I never had a better lot of young 

 birds. They hatched off strong and well, and now I have 

 lost nearly all of them." 



It is probable that the sheep might have been dressed 

 with some arsenical or other poisonoQS "dip" or "wash,'^ 

 which would remain on the wool and prove fatal to the young 

 birds. The arsenical solution known as "weed-killer" is 

 not unfrequently fatal to pheasants in pleasure grounds ; it 



