52 Formation of Coverts. 



Charles Waterton, who protected every bird in his York- 

 shire domain, pubhshed the following details of his method 

 of preserving the pheasants at Walton Hall : — " This bird has 

 a capacious stomach and requires much nutriment, while its 

 timidity soon causes it to abandon those places which are 

 disturbed. It is fond of acorns, beech-mast, the berries of 

 the hawthorn, the seeds of the wild rose, and the tubers of 

 the Jerusalem artichoke. As long as these and the corn 

 dropped in the harvest can be procured, the pheasant will 

 do very well. In the spring it finds abundance of nourish- 

 ment in the sprouting leaves of young clover ; but from the 

 commencement of the New Year till the vernal period their 

 wild food affords a very scanty supply, and the bird will be 

 exposed to all the evils of the Vagrant Act, unless you can 

 contrive to keep it at home by an artificial supply of food. 

 Boiled potatoes (which the pheasant prefers much to those in 

 the raw state) and beans are, perhaps, the two most nourishing 

 things that can be offered in the depth of winter. Beans in 

 the end are cheaper than all the smaller kinds of grain, 

 because the little birds, which usually swarm at the place 

 where pheasants are fed, cannot swallow them : and if you 

 conceal the beans vmder yew or holly bushes or under the 

 lower branches of the spruce fir tree, they will be out of the 

 way of the rooks and ringdoves. About two roods of the 

 thousand-headed cabbage are a most valuable acquisition to 

 the pheasant preserve. You sow a few ounces of seed in 

 April, and transplant the young plants 2ft. asunder in the 

 month of June. By the time that the harvest is all in, these 

 cabbages will afford a most excellent aliment to the pheasant, 

 and are particularly serviceable when the ground is deeply 

 covered with snow. I often think that pheasants are 

 unintentionally destroyed by farmers during the autumnal 

 seed-time. They have a custom of steeping the wheat in 

 arsenic water. This must be injurious to birds which pick 

 up the corn remaining on the surface of the mould. I some- 

 times find pheasants, at this period, dead in the plantations. 



