THE PHEASANT. 
23 
found to be twenty-four in number, all of full size and perfect, — in 
addition, were many large insect larvse. Either oats or Indian corn 
being thrown out every morning before the windows of the cottage for 
pheasants, I had an opportunity of observing their great preference of 
the former to the latter. After several grains of the Indian corn were 
picked up hastily, they seemed to stick in the bird’s throat and were with 
much difficulty swallowed. The neck was moved in various directions 
to accomplish this object, and the eyes were often closed in the effort ; 
but immediately afterwards, the birds recommenced eating at the grain 
which had given them such trouble. Yet this grain is small compared 
with full-sized hazel-nuts. I remarked a pheasant one day in Islay 
taking the sparrow’s place, by picking at horse-dung on the road for 
undigested oats. The woods here, during the month of January, 
resounded about sunset with the loud crowing of the cock pheasants 
then betaking themselves to their nightly roosts. 
It is gratifying to find writers of such enlarged experience and 
accurate observation as Mr. St. John and Mr. Knox, agreeing upon the 
subject of the good done by the pheasant to the farm, as more than 
counterbalancing any injury it may commit. The latter author, in his 
very agreeably written volume entitled Ornithological Kambles in 
Sussex,” enters fully and in an interesting manner into the subject, 
summing up with the verdict that this bird, owing to the great number 
of injurious insects it destroys, “ is rather the friend than the foe of 
the agriculturist,” p. 165. The former author, in his ‘‘Tour in 
Sutherland,” vol. ii. p. 217, speaks still more decisively with respect 
to the pheasant, which he considers in a great degree insectivorous. 
This whole matter is most fully and justly argued in a pamphlet 
entitled, “ Observations on Game and the Game Laws”^ (p. 14-21), 
in which the author remarks that — “ Pheasants [in reasonable num- 
bers] have in truth been a profitable stock on the ground. They have 
been subsisting upon weeds and insects injurious to cultivation, and 
upon other substances not useful to man ; and in return they now 
furnish man with an article of wholesome and delicate food.” p. 20. 
By J. Burn Murdoch, Esq. (1847). 
