IG 
PAIRING TIME. 
mon Pheasant. In a wild state, all tlie birds of tlio above 
order reside in woods and thickets, seeking their food 
chiefly in the ground, and nestling among the herbage. 
They feed on insects of various kinds, and vegetable sub- 
stances in general, with occasionally leaves and insects. 
Their digestive apparatus is peculiar, the gizzard perform- 
ing the work of a mill for grinding and triturating the 
food before it passes into the stomach. 
Truly a glorious bird is the Phasiamis CoIcJiicus — the 
Common Pheasant of the English preserve ! And 
what BO exciting to the sportsman as the lohir-r-r-r of 
its quickly- expanded wings, as it rises heavily from the 
covert, and vainly seeks in flight that safety which the fern 
brake and leafy copse will no longer afford ? There has it 
dwelt, since first it chipped the shell, and came forth from 
the clear brown egg, a little downy creature, scarcely bigger 
than a sparrow, to follow its heedful mother hither and 
thither, and be fed with such ^ delicacies of the season ' as 
ants' eggs, small caterpillars, grubs, and maggots, which she 
scratched out of the earth, or from amid the dead leaves, 
or picked out from the crevices of the old park palings or 
the decayed trunks of trees. The nest of the parent bird / 
had been commenced when the bleak March winds were' 
whistling through the nearly -naked boughs, and the Janu- 
ary snow^s yet lay in white patches between the spreading 
roots of the gnarled oaks, and towering elms, and in many a 
nook and hollow of the wide w^oodland. When the primrose 
buds were just beginning to show themselves, and a faint 
odour, like a promise and a foretaste of delicious things to 
come, was wafted from the mossy violet beds ; when all 
natui^ stood listening for the first shout of the cuckoo, to 
tell that spring was really come ; when now and then 
a solitary songster sent forth an interrupted strain, in pre- 
paration for the vernal chorus, and the ear heard, or the 
heart fancied, a . sound of innumerable wings of nightin- 
gales, and other melodious migrants, returning to their old 
haunts and homes of happiness, winnowing the boisterous 
air, and soothing it into mildness and serenity, as music is 
said by Milton to have smoothed — 
The raven down of darkness till it emilcd ; 
