82 The Natural History of British Game Birds 
Mr. R. Carr Ellison states that Pheasants are particularly fond of the spangles of 
the oak, so common in autumn on the under-side of the leaves. Just before the fall 
of the leaf these spangles, which contain the dormant eggs of the gadfly {Neuroterus 
lenticular is), become detached, and on falling to the ground become an excellent winter 
store of insect food for Pheasants. Mr. Tegetmeier gives a very lucid account of how 
the digestive organs of the Pheasant assimilate the varied diet : — 
"The structure," he says (p. 8), "of the digestive organs of the pheasant is perfectly adapted 
to the assimilation of the food on which it feeds. The sharp edge of the upper mandible of 
the bill is admirably fitted for cutting off portions of the vegetables on which it partly subsists, 
and the whole organ is equally well adapted for securing the various articles of its extensive 
dietary. The food, when swallowed, passes into a very capacious membranous crop, situated 
under the skin at the fore part of the breast. From this organ portions gradually pass into the 
true digestive stomach, or preventriculus ; this is a short tube, an inch and a half long, connecting 
the crop with the gizzard. Small as this organ may be, it is one of extreme importance, as the 
numerous small glands of which it mainly consists secrete the acid digestive or gastric fluid 
necessary to the digestion of the food ; and in cases in which pheasants or fowls are fed on 
too great an abundance of animal food, or any highly-stimulating diet, this organ becomes 
inflamed, and death is frequently the result. From the preventriculus the food passes into the 
gizzard, which is lined with a dense thick skin ; in its cavity the food is ground down to a pulp, 
the process being assisted by the presence of the numerous small stones and angular pieces of 
gravel, &c, swallowed by the bird. The food, thus ground to a pulp, passes on into the 
intestines, which are no less than six feet in length ; in the upper part of this long canal it 
is mingled with the bile formed in the liver, the pancreatic fluid, &c, and, as it passes from 
one extremity to the other, the nourishment for the support of the animal is extracted ; this 
being greatly aided by the operation of the two caeca, or blind intestines, which are very large 
in all the birds of this group." 
The late Mr. Charles VVaterton published the following details of his method of 
preserving the Pheasants at Walton Hall : — 
"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 hawthorn, the seeds of the wild rose, and the tubers of the Jeru- 
salem 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 commencement 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 usually 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 2 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 pheasant, and are particularly serviceable when the ground is deeply covered 
with snow. I often think that pheasants are unintentionally destroyed by farmers during 
the autumnal seed-time. They have a custom of steeping the wheat in arsenic water. 
This must be injurious to birds which pick up the corn remaining on the surface of the 
