one pill given daily to each bird. Even if the birds be quite well, but the weather wet, one of these pills given on alternate days will be beneficial, acting as a preventive. It will be much better to have the coops upon some gravelly ground than upon turf; if near to some groundsel and lettuce, so much the better. Pheasants can be reared in the same manner. Curds are also a good and safe food for young birds, but the staple food must be ants' eggs.

Young pheasants are also subject to a disease called the gapes; this may be cured by the same remedy as the pip. The coops of both partridge and pheasant ought to be moved every morning; if they be placed on the grass, it ought to be mowed short, and they ought not to be let out of their coops till the dew be off. Little heaps of gravel should be made for them to roll themselves in. No water should be given till they are a month old, and then some saffron must always be put in it. As the birds become strong, boiled rice may be given in addition to their other food, especially if it be observed that they have diarrhoea, to which they are sometimes subject. Should rice fail in stopping it, some alum may be boiled with it. Should it not be possible to procure a sufficient supply of ants' eggs, then maggots, or the larvæ of wasps, may be used. The former may be procured from horse-flesh or bullock's liver,

hung up in a warm place under trees, with a tub underneath, with bran in it, to receive them. The larvæ, if not wanted for immediate use, must be baked to keep them serviceable, and prevent their arriving at maturity.

PHEASANT SHOOTING.

IN former days, when game was not so abundant, nor so highly preserved as at the present time, spaniels were generally in use for pheasant shooting; and in a country where the fields were small and surrounded by thick hedgerows and shaws, spaniels afforded excellent sport to two guns, one being on either side of the fence, especially where there was a mixture of game. With two brace of good spaniels, and one good beater, the widest hedgerow or shaw will be thoroughly ransacked, and every head of game forced out either on one side or the other; and as these lively and excitable little dogs are bustling about and giving tongue, the sportsman is kept in a continual state of pleasurable excitement, as to what kind of game is to succeed that which has just made its appearance; and as all sorts of game resort to hedgerows and shaws, they become a sort of sporting lottery, from which in addition to

I

pheasants, partridges, hares, and rabbits, an extra and unexpected prize, in the shape of a woodcock, may frequently be secured. In fact, in the winter, when the leaf is off, I don't know of prettier or more amusing sport than hedgerow and shaw shooting, with two brace of spaniels and a brother sportsman, in a country not overstocked with game, but where there is a slight sprinkling of everything, so that, with good shooting and a little fagging, a tolerable bag may be made. But this sort of old-fashioned shooting, which I partook of constantly in my younger days, and remember with pleasure, is now superseded by a different style of proceeding, consequent on the new and extensive system of preservation of game, but especially of pheasants.

In former days, if two guns killed their five or six brace of pheasants, with a mixture of partridges, hares, rabbits, and two or three woodcocks, the sport was considered most satisfactory; but now pheasants are all reserved for one or two great days, and if two or three hundred are not killed, the battue' is thought nothing of; hence the number of pheasants, and loads of other game, sufficient for a winter's sport for two or three guns, which are sacrificed to the gratification of having one or two great days: and this vast slaughter is committed without the aid of any dogs, beyond, perhaps, a brace of retrievers, to the very small gratification of any genuine sportsman.

The general mode of proceeding is to collect the best and most crack shots of the neighbourhood, bad shots being scrupulously avoided, as well as those who kill their game too near, and thereby render it unfit for the market, as these battues are generally a matter of business as well as pleasure. These being assembled, the covers are driven, by a number of men and boys, up to particular points, at which the guns are placed at intervals; and as there is generally a net round the cover and in different directions through it, so as to divide the beats, with perhaps a small outlet to the last beat, the sport is tolerably divided, and shots are generally secured at all sorts of game which the cover affords, and immense slaughter effected.

Pheasants, from their indisposition to rise and their predisposition to run, generally proceed towards the guns, so soon as the least noise takes place in cover; but few rise till they are driven into close quarters by the beaters, and compelled to take wing in self-defence. If there were no nets to stop them, almost every pheasant would run out of the cover, and few shots be had; as it is a singular fact, that when pheasants reach a net which is only a yard high, instead of flying over it, as they might easily do, after having made a few fruitless attempts to get through it, they return towards the beaters. Some few of the old cocks,

who have had the good fortune to survive a few battues,' hop over the nets with the agility of a greyhound, and make their escape as fast as their legs will carry them. Their fate is, however, very possibly merely postponed to the end of the day, when the 'grande finale ' takes place at some thick corner of the wood, with a deep ditch round it, into which these old fellows have skulked, with several of their equally old and cunning companions, to undergo their final ordeal, as there is generally some desperate work just at last.

Some, however, must escape, more birds frequently rising at the same time than can be shot at even by a dozen guns, and many escape during the loading or exchange of guns.

One gun may have an excellent day's sport with an old steady pointer, on the day succeeding a battue, in the vicinity of the cover, if there be any good turnip-fields or hedgerows. Those who have large preserves of pheasants object to their covers being beaten, or in any way disturbed, more than once or twice during the season, and hence the necessity of a 'battue.' There is some reason in this, as no bird is more easily disturbed than a pheasant, or who strays further without immediately returning, so that it would be a very losing game to disturb large covers frequently, merely for the sport of one or two guns; but still there are always parts in every cover, where a