9i Pheasants. 



however, we come definitely to fixing the cause of most 

 pheasant diseases as they exist to-day in more or less 

 widespread activity, we have to look to other reasons. 

 Unless these be brought into prominence, and be well 

 understood by the preserver, some of the most fatal of 

 them are sure to run riot through his stock and render his 

 rearing operations abortive. 



It must be recognised from the outset that the state of 

 things set up by close preservation, which involves a far 

 larger number of birds and animals seeking to exist upon 

 a certain limited area of land than that area could possibly 

 carry under purely natural conditions, creates an artificial 

 situation which will permit of this undue increase. Sooner 

 or later, unless the most stringent and far-reaching 

 measures be taken, unseen and unfelt influences, which 

 are always at work, will, as it were, arise to remedy 

 or neutralise the artificial state set up, and restore the 

 proper balance of Nature. 



In order that anything of the kind may be avoided, or 

 at least mitigated, it is necessary that the circumstances 

 which are calculated to produce conditions favourable to 

 the outbreak of disease should be known, so that they may 

 be met and remedied at the very earliest possible moment. 

 Of course, expert, almost semi-scientific, knowledge of this 

 kind may or may not be possible with the gamekeeper or 

 even the preserver, but to the extent possible to the indi- 

 vidual it should be. Upon the other hand, I am not with 

 those who would burden the gamekeeper with knowledge 

 of a kind which it is not within his capacity to assimilate. 

 To the ordinary individual of his class it should be 

 sufficient if he be cognisant of the patent conditions likely 

 to cause disease, and be sufficiently right-reasoning to seek 

 to remove or to remedy them. More than this it would be 

 unfair to expect. 



