104 



THE PHEASANT. 



to the successful propagation of the pheasant. This 

 bird has a capacious stomach, and requires much 

 nutriment; while its timidity soon causes it to 

 abandon those places which are disturbed. It is 

 fond of acorns, beech mast, the berries of the haw- 

 thorn, the seeds of the wild rose, and the tubers of 

 the Jerusalem artichoke. As long as these, and 

 the corn dropped in the harvest, can be procured, 

 the pheasant will do very well. In the spring it 

 finds abundance of nourishment in the sprouting 

 leaves of young clover; but, from the commence- 

 ment of the new year till the vernal period, their 

 wild food affords a very scanty supply; and the 

 bird will be exposed to all the evils of the vagrant 

 act, unless you can contrive to keep it at home by 

 an artificial supply of food. Boiled potatoes (which 

 the pheasant prefers much to those in the raw state) 

 and beans are, perhaps, the two most nourishing 

 things that can be offered in the depth of winter. 

 Beans in the end are cheaper than all the smaller 

 kinds of grain ; because the little birds, which usu- 

 ally swarm at the place where pheasants are fed, 

 cannot swallow them ; and, if you conceal the beans 

 under yew or holly bushes, or under the lower 

 branches of the spruce fir tree, they will be out of 

 the way of the rooks and ringdoves. About two 

 roods of the thousand-headed cabbage are a most 

 valuable acquisition to the pheasant preserve. You 

 sow a few ounces of seed in April, and transplant 

 the young plants, two feet asunder, in the month of 

 June. By the time that the harvest is all in, these 

 cabbages will afford a most excellent aliment to the 



