2 28 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



i860 it had increased progressively to 2256 ; and in 1881 there 

 were shot no fewer than 5363 pheasants, the best day being 1135 

 head to eight guns. Of course this enormous increase is due to 

 artificial breeding and strict preserving — for the pheasant, 

 especially in his early youth, requires much shelter and plenty of 

 food — but it shows how much these may do when carefully carried 

 out, materially benefiting the proprietor and the food supply of the 

 community as well as the sportsman. The young birds are 

 mostly fed upon ant eggs, maggots, and grits, but when grown 

 they eat seeds, roots, and leaves indiscriminately. The cock is far 

 from being a specimen of domestic virtue ; he takes no notice of 

 his offspring, and during the greater part of the year he leads a 

 very independent kind of existence, associating mostly with others 

 of his sex, while he frequently mates with the common hen, ^nd 

 sometimes with the grouse, turkey, and guinea-fowl. He is also 

 of a very pugnacious disposition, and often enters into mortal 

 combat with the barn-door cock, over whom he has no small 

 advantage owing to his powers of flight, which enable him, when 

 fatigued, to ascend into a tree for recuperative purposes. 

 Occasionally the hen-pheasant chooses the deserted tree nest of 

 an owl or squirrel wherein to lay her eggs, but her ordinary nest is 

 a very rude construction indeed of leaves and grass, placed in a 

 slight depression of the ground, with hardly any attempt at conceal- 

 ment ; the eggs are of a uniform olive-brown colour, and usually 

 from eight to ten in number. 



The Pheasant is an undoubted friend of the farmer, for he 

 destroys vast numbers of injurious insects — a form of food which 

 he loves beyond others — and over 1200 wire-worms, that worst 

 pest of the farmer, have been taken out of the crop of a single 



