The best time to find pheasants out of cover is the first hour after sunrise, while they are feeding in the adjacent stubble and turnip fields. When they have done feeding, a few stragglers, instead of returning to the cover, will remain under the hedges of the fields in which they feed. At noon, when the sun shines brightly, a few will venture out of the woods, and bask under thick hedges, or holly-bushes, or amongst brambles, but seldom at any great distance from cover. During a dense fog, pheasants venture farthest from the woods. While the leaves are upon the trees, they seldom wander far from the place where they were hatched, or the wood or plantation to which they may be said to belong.

At the beginning of October, pheasant-shooting is combined with hare and partridge shooting, the sport being conducted on the outside of the larger and denser covers, or in the brakes or coppices, where the foliage does not intercept a view of the rising birds. The young ones are then by no means full-grown, nor have they attained that brilliancy of plumage, which they afterwards acquire. They are more alarmed at the dog than at the shooter, and consequently, to avoid the former will fly almost in the face of the latter. Towards the end of October, when the leaves fall, and the brambles decay, the sportsman ventures within the

covers.

In November, pheasant shooting is combined with woodcock shooting; the trees are leafless, the sportsman's gap and gun-road are open; and if,

in addition to pheasants and cocks, there should be blackgame in cover, there can scarcely be better diversion. Cocks are abundant. Pheasants and blackgame are well-grown, well-fed, and in full plumage: the pheasant is scaled with gold to the throat, and the blackcock is feathered to the foot! Shooting, this month, requires perseverance and labour, but the contents of his bird-bag will amply compensate the sportsman for both, if he regard the length of the pheasants, the number of the woodcocks, and the weight of the blackcocks. November, when the weather is favourable, is unquestionably the best month for cover-shooting. A brace of full-feathered November pheasants, to the true sportsman, are worth a bag-full of October poults. Pheasants and blackgame do not pair, like red grouse and partridges. It is unsportsmanlike to kill either a grey-hen, (which is the female of the blackcock,) or a hen-pheasant. The pheasant is a strong bird, and requires a heavy blow, to disable him from running, when brought down.

Beaters are almost as serviceable as dogs in cover-shooting; they should be sent into the thickest and most impervious parts. The shooter who chooses an open beat, in a part where little game is expected to be found, will kill more than he who is entangled in hollies and brambles, though the birds be rising all round him. When beating woods, the judicious shooter will generally place himself well forward, and so that he can have a distinct view of all birds that rise or fly past, within shot of him, and in those open glades, where the footed game

may be seen bolting out; and, if local circumstances permit, he will, before the cover is completely beaten, place himself between it and the adjacent woods, as in all probability, where not intercepted by the shooters, every pheasant will endeavour to make off in the same direction.

For reasons which we have before adverted to, the setter, or cock-dog, is to be preferred to the pointer for pheasant shooting. Pheasants will sometimes lie very close, so that it is with great difficulty they can be made to rise; therefore dogs that will dash into the thicket are most useful. For covershooting, where game is abundant, retrievers are indispensable. Many birds are recovered by them that would otherwise be lost; and much time is saved.*

* Mr. Waterton's observations on the pheasant are particularly valuable. After exploring the wild woods of Guiana and combatting crocodiles and boa-constrictors on the banks of the Essiquibo, he retired to his patrimonial estate in Yorkshire, whence he has banished the tube of the sportsman and gamekeeper, and where, in his own words, he has "shut the temple of Janus, and proclaimed undisturbed repose to those of the feathered race which come to seek for shelter." He consequently enjoys as good, perhaps better, opportunities than any other individual, of observing the habits of many of our British birds in a state of quiescence. He thus writes on the pheasant; but the following is merely a short extract :—

"The more we look into the habits of the pheasant, the more we must be persuaded that much more attention ought to be paid to it, than is generally paid to other kinds of game. The never-failing morning and evening notice which it gives of its place of retreat, together with its superior size, cause it to be soon detected and easily killed." * * * "The fowling-piece of the nocturnal poacher is the most fatal weapon used for its destruction. The report of a gun, or a clap of thunder during the night, will often cause the pheasant to begin to crow, as I have already stated; and this greatly endangers their safety. When once they are frightened from their roost, they

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Hares remain in growing corn until the operation of the sickle compels them to seek some other never perch again during the remainder of the night but take refuge among the grass, and underneath the hedges, where they fall an easy prey to the cat, the fox, and the stoat. A poacher armed with a gun finds a cloudy night fully as good for slaughter as one in which the moon shines; and, if larch trees grow in the wood, to these he resorts; knowing, by experience, that the pheasant prefers this kind of tree to any other." "Food and a quiet retreat are the two best offers that man can make to the feathered race, to induce them to take up their abode on his domain : and they are absolutely necessary to the successful propagation of the pheasant. 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 Jerusalem 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 a raw state) and beans, are, perhaps, the two most nourishing things that can be afforded in the depth of winter. Beans, in the end, are cheaper than all the smaller kinds of grain; because the little birds, which usually

shelter. When driven from their summer quarters, they betake themselves to the woods, or lie concealed under hedges or bushes, or on the steep sides of brakes or cloughs where there is plenty of cover, and sometimes in aftermath; all which situations they in a great measure abandon when the autumnal leaves begin to fall. Their next location is in patches of grass, fern, heather, gorse, brambles, or rushes, where they are to be found all the winter, though the best place to look for them in November is the stubble-field, where they will not unfrequently be also found in October and December.

In January they are often met with in the fallow fields. Should the weather be warm after the 10th of January, they will be found in the vicinity of marshes, or in other low moist situations. In short, to find hares, the hedges should be beaten in September, covers in October, stubbles in November, parks, pastures, and uninclosed grounds.

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, they will be out of the way of the rooks and ring-doves. 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 two 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 pheasants, and are particularly serviceable when the ground is deeply covered with snow." "Next to the larch, this species of tree is generally preferred by the pheasants for their roosting place; and it is quite impossible that the poachers can shoot them in these trees. Moreover, magpies and jays will 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 essential service to me in a night excursion after poachers.”—Essays on Ornithology, by Charles Waterton, Esq. 2d. Edit. Lond. 1838.

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