^ail and Partridge 125 



ant. Pheasants were rare round about White 

 Oaks. Joe had seen just four of them. He 

 wished they were plentier. Two of those he 

 had seen were in a game-bag, but the others 

 he had watched, strutting and drumming upon 

 a log in the woods, and at last, flinging furiously 

 at each other, fighting as desperately as game- 

 cocks, and in much the same fashion. They 

 were cock-birds. His father had said their 

 mates must have been looking on, concealed 

 in the brush a little way off. Major Baker 

 had in his boyhood often watched such encoun- 

 ters. Then there were pheasants in every deep 

 and wide stretch of woodland. It was the clear- 

 ing, more than hunting, that had made them so 

 few and shy. They feed and breed, and haunt 

 in remote thickets, virgin of human footsteps, 

 and, though hatched in broods, do not keep to- 

 gether much after they are half-grown. The 

 broods are very much smaller than those of 

 quail, rarely more than nine, and commonly 

 under seven. The nest is a hollow in the 

 ground, under thick thorny cover. The young 

 run swiftly as soon as hatched, and can dis- 

 appear in the very lightest cover, their little 

 gray-brown downy bodies never showing against 

 leafy earth. At a week old they have wing 

 feathers strong enough to help them to a perch 

 amid low bushes. The mother bird takes 

 them there, and goes higher and higher as they 



