go NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANT 



of English keepers cherish a very special objection to 

 armed marauders, and no wonder, for the butt-end of 

 a gun is a murderous weapon in a melee. 



There is nothing peculiarly national in the 

 practice of shooting roosting pheasants. Poachers of 

 other races do the same as the Saxon in this respect. 

 Savi tells us that in Tuscany the peasants of his day 

 (he wrote sixty years ago) were in the practice of 

 shooting the roosters . ' On a winter's night, when 

 the trees are entirely stripped of their foliage, the 

 poachers wend their way, armed with guns, through 

 the oppressive silence of the woods, carefully scru- 

 tinising the trees ; if the night happens to be clear, 

 they, with the practice which they have acquired, easily 

 distinguish the pheasants roosting on the branches of 

 the trees, for they generally occupy a position which 

 enables a mortal blow to be delivered.' 



The habits of pheasants, by the way, are modified 

 as much by local circumstances as those of other 

 game birds. I asked a Perthshire keeper, who 

 observes the traits of all the wild creatures on his 

 ground very closely, what trees he thought the phea- 

 sants found most suitable as their nightly shelter. His 

 answer was that the birds which he watched generally 

 chose to roost in oaks or larch trees. He added, that 

 he had himself seen as many as eighteen phea- 



