Pheasant Huts. 59 



the corn in straw should be laid for the pheasants to 

 help themselves. In these huts the pheasants find shelter, 

 comfort, and cover in rough, wintry, and severe weather. 

 Care should be taken to have plenty of dry dust on the floor 

 underneath for the pheasants to bask in. This is a most 

 essential provision — quite as much so for pheasants as for our 

 poultry — for it is quite as natural for them to dust to clean 

 themselves. It is a fact within easy observation how the 

 pheasant searches out the base of an old, dry, dusty pollard 

 tree or hedge bank to bask in the dust. Besides, every 

 grain of corn that falls through the open feeding floor is 

 searched for and found in this dust. Underneath and on 

 the dusty floor is a safe and convenient place, sheltered from 

 severe frosts, etc., to receive any other kind of food, such 

 as refuse potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, mangolds, swede 

 tiirnips, cabbage, Spanish chestnuts, acorns, beechnuts, a 

 few raisins, Indian corn, or anything else you wish the 

 pheasants to have. Such changes of food cast about 

 their feeding sheds are sure to secure them keeping 

 pretty well to covert, particularly if they have water at 

 hand. I have seen large expenditures for well digging 

 or for the conveyance of water b}' ram and pipes from 

 some stream at a distance ; but the best and simplest 

 plan to keep up a general supply of water for the season 

 the pheasant is in covert is certainly the shallow catch- 

 pool system. In my humble opinion, it is the most 

 natural, convenient, and inexpensive plan of all I have seen 

 or had anything to do with in my time. I will explain what. 

 I mean l^y catehpools : Choose any little slope or valley in 

 high and dry coverts where some command may be had of 

 the surrounding surface water after rain ; scoop out a hole in 

 the earth's surface in the shape of a spoon or bowl, sloping 

 gradually all round to the centre and deepest part, which 

 need not be deeper than from eighteen inches to three feet, 

 according to width and length ; the edges, to admit the water 

 running into it freely, must be kept a little under the earth's 



