10S Laying and Hatching. 



The covert annually yielded about 2000 head of game, 

 a figure attributable to good management, inasmuch as the 

 soil is heavy, and in wet weather particularly damp. No 

 quack remedies were used in the feeding of these birds, which 

 were amply supplied with grit, the particular variety employed 

 being fine granite. This was most greedily taken by the 

 hirds, and was purchased by the truck load. Granite contains, 

 in addition to the extremely hard quartz, which assists in the 

 grinding of the food in the gizzard, other minerals essential 

 to healthy growth, such as Hme, potash, iron, &c., in the form 

 of felspar and mica. There is another point to which I may 

 call attention. At the end of the season the head keeper 

 carefully went round the coverts, and any bird that he could 

 detect showing the slightest sign of having been wounded, 

 or that was not in the pink of condition, was at once dispatched, 

 so as to leave nothing bvit healthy and vigorous birds to breed 

 from. 



Now, it may be asked, to what was the long continued 

 success of the pheasants on this estate due ? There can be but 

 one answer. To the good sanitary arrangements, and to the 

 rational method of feeding and management adopted by an 

 unusually intelhgent keeper. So far from this system being 

 expensive it is exceedingly economical, and the result is as 

 satisfactory as it is possible to conceive, for there were more 

 strong, vigorous, and healthy birds produced on this estate 

 in proportion to the acreage than on any other with which 

 the writer was acquainted. On several of the estates not far 

 distant, many of which possess greater advantages than 

 Elsenham, disease was most prevalent, and, of course, in such 

 cases, there is always the danger of birds suffering from the 

 typhoid epidemic coming into the coverts, and tainting the 

 soil by their excrement. 



It is hardly necessary to state that great care was taken in 

 selecting broody hens. No fowls with the infectious skin 

 disease known as " favus " were ever chosen, and hens with 

 -scurfy legs, which invariably infect the young pheasants, were 



