294 THE LADIES’ MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
such flocks of them as congregate and live together through the winter. 
In this season they roost on the tops of high trees, and then live chiefly 
on beech-mast, acorns, and other seeds which they find in the woods, or 
on what they can still find in stubble-fields. When snow lies on the 
ground they fare hardly, and are often fain to fill their crops with turnip 
leaves, or those of coleseed, or even dig into the turnip bulbs for temporary 
subsistence. 
Their eggs are often put under a tame pigeon in dovecots, and there 
hatched and reared; but though they will continue to live among the 
others for a month or two, they only get so far civilised and tame as to 
fall an easy prey to the relentless gunner, or fly away to join their wild 
relations in the woods. 
The Turtle-doves arrive in England from warmer countries in pairs 
about the 1st of May, and immediately set about the work of nidification. 
They build a shallow nest, in a thickly-branched tree at no great height 
from the ground. Their food is chiefly small seeds, particularly those of 
tares, both wild and cultivated. They fly with remarkable swiftness, 
always in pairs, and seem to return again to their natal groves, or at 
least to have predilections for particular districts of country. The turtles 
are the most harmless of beings, and their plaintive cooing is one of the 
most agreeable rural sounds, giving the idea of quiet solitude and repose. 
If taken before the young are full-feathered, they are easily tamed and 
kept in aviaries. Their faithfulness to each other is proverbial: it is 
true, twins they are born, and as twins they ever live : a single turtle is 
never seen but when the hen is sitting, and then but for a very short 
time. But whether when one dies the other cannot survive, is a circum¬ 
stance which cannot be ascertained by observing them in a wild state. 
The Pheasant is a well-known bird, and whether originally a native 
or not, is now so universally distributed, that they are perfectly natural¬ 
ised. In their manners they are much like the domestic cock and hen ; 
the male pheasant crows; the female makes a nest among dry leaves 
under a bush, and both roost on the lower branches of trees. The males 
are very salacious, often pairing with the hens from the farm-yard, 
or even with a hen partridge. When it is wished to encourage 
and preserve pheasants, they demand much attention from the keeper. 
Their natural food is grain and ant-eggs, and they are partial to those 
woods and coppices where these last abound. They have many enemies : 
when the hen is sitting, polecats, stoats, and, above all, the fox, destroy 
many of them; and all the time the chicks are unable to fly to roost, 
they are in jeopardy from these nightly prowlers. But their most fell 
foe is the incorrigible poacher, who on moonlight nights stalks under the 
