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 woodeil 
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 afforded 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, 
