106 



THE PHEASANT. 



ways resort to them at nightfall ; and they never 

 fail to give the alarm, on the first appearance of an 

 enemy. Many a time has the magpie been of es- 

 sential service to me, in a night excursion after 

 poachers. If there be no park wall, an eye ought 

 to be kept from time to time on the neighbouring 

 hedges. Poachers are apt to set horse-hair snares 

 in them ; and these villanous nooses give the phea- 

 sants apoplexy. Six or seven dozen of wooden 

 pheasants, nailed on the branches of trees, in the 

 surrounding woods, cause unutterable vexation and 

 loss of ammunition to these amateurs of nocturnal 

 plunder. Small clumps of hollies, and yew trees 

 with holly hedges round them, are of infinite ser- 

 vice, when planted at intervals of 150 yards. To 

 these the pheasants fly, on the sudden approach of 

 danger during the day, and skulk there till the 

 alarm is over. When incubation is going on, the 

 diurnal poachers make great havoc among the phea- 

 sants' eggs. They sell sittings of them for five 

 shillings (and sometimes for ten, if the risk in pro- 

 curing them be great), to gentlemen in towns, who 

 place them under bantam hens. If to these ar- 

 rangements for protecting pheasants there could be 

 added a park v/all from nine to ten feet high, and 

 including about 250 acres, consisting of wood, mea- 

 dow, pasture, and arable land, the naturalist might 

 put all enemies at defiance, and revel in the en- 

 chanting scene afibrded by the different evolutions 

 of single pairs, and congregated groups^ of animated 

 nature. Unmolested by packs of hounds, unbroken 

 in upon by idle boys, and unannoyed by stray cattle. 



