112 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
important is a regular temperature in the artificial 
hatching of eggs. The rational inference is that it 
is equally important in the hatching of eggs by birds 
in a wild state. One knows also that eggs must be 
turned during incubation. So when the weather is 
unseasonably cold, especially during the night (which 
is always cold enough), not only do some of the 
eggs in a nest become ruined by being chilled, but, 
owing to the change of position in the nest, most 
of the clutch may be spoiled, or their embryos so 
weakened that either they do not hatch at all or 
produce useless chicks. 
After a breeding season which has not appeared 
to be over-cold or over-wet, one may be disappointed 
at the supply of pheasants when shooting begins. 
There may have been a good hatch, and plenty of 
fine, newly-hatched broods may have been seen 
about. All may be well while the chicks still are 
small enough to allow the whole brood to find 
accommodation beneath their mother, and so warmth, 
But when the fast-growing chicks become so large 
that some must remain in the cold, a continual 
scrambling goes on for the inside berths. And so 
it ends by the rearing to maturity of no more birds 
than if the brood originally had been half as big. 
If all hen pheasants left for stock could be relied 
upon to rear half a dozen chicks each, there would 
be no need for hand-rearing—at least, where there 
were no foxes. And still less, if pheasants could 
