OLD-WORLD FOWLING 69 



the intention of securing and silencing the birds as 

 soon as they are captured. The pochette is used in 

 the same way to bar the runs of the pheasant through 

 the brushwood. Pheasants, in France at any rate, 

 wander abroad three times a day in search of food — in 

 the morning when the sun is rising, about 11 a.m. or 

 noon, and again about two hours before sunset. It 

 is at such times as these that the poacher sets nets in 

 the way of the birds. 



One of my favourite authors is Alexander 

 Neckam, the foster-brother of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. 

 The treatise which he compiled, ' De Naturis Rerum,' 

 has been pronounced to be ' an interesting monument 

 of the history of science in Western Europe, and 

 especially in England, during the latter half of the 

 twelfth century.' The eulogy which Neckam bestows 

 upon the pheasants is accompanied by a terse but 

 pithy description of a medieeval method of netting the 

 male of this bird. The fowlers work in company, not 

 alone. When a couple of men have decided to go 

 out catching pheasants, they provide themselves with 

 a net and a dummy pheasant. The latter is painted 

 up to represent a cock pheasant. Having marked 

 down a wild pheasant, the fowlers put out their 

 dummy, and hasten to conceal themselves. The 

 male pheasant is naturally a very jealous bird, so he 



