20 Natural History. 



lay in the middle of March, as they sit twenty-five days, and 

 very often lay only every other day, at least at the commence- 

 ment." Other cases earlier by three or four days than this 

 instance have been recorded. The late Eev. G. C. Green, of 

 Modbury, Devon, wrote : " On Sunday, April 18, 1875, as my 

 curate was returning from taking the duty in a neighbouring 

 church, a hen pheasant started from the roadside hedge close 

 to the town, and fluttered before him. While watching her 

 movements he saw eleven young pheasants, apparently newly 

 hatched, fluttering in the hedge, and at the edge of a pond 

 close by. They soon scrambled into some cover, and the 

 mother bird flew o& to rejoin them from another quarter. 

 I understand, from inquiry, that this is not a solitary instance 

 of such an early brood of pheasants in South Devon." 



On the other hand, examples of nests deferred until very 

 late in the year are not unknown. Mr. W. W. Blest, of 

 Biddenden, near Staplehurst, writes : " Whilst partridge 

 shooting on September 3, 1874, we disturbed a sitting 

 pheasant, the nest containing twelve eggs. We often hear 

 of the early nesting of game birds, but rarely so late in 

 the season." On October 1, 1894, a nest with eight eggs 

 was found in a turnip field in Forfarshire. In October, 1869, 

 Mr. Walter E. Tyrrell, of Plashwood, near Stowmarket, 

 forwarded to me a young pheasant, with the following letter : 

 " When pheasant shooting" with some friends yesterday, 

 the 15th inst., in this neighbourhood, one of the keepers 

 picked up dead, in a path in the wood we were in, a very 

 young chick pheasant ; it could not have been hatched more 

 than a week. My keeper tells me he has found them (but very 

 rarely) as young in September." I carefully examined the 

 young bird, which was not more than two or three days old. 

 On October 20, 1900, Mr. A. Dunnage, of Colchester, forwarded 

 to me a pheasant chick, one of a brood in a hedgerow, not 

 near to any covert. These late-hatched birds were in all 

 probabihty the produce of a second laying during the 

 season. 



