The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1885-11-21
GAME FARMS.
Pheasant Breeding and Shooting in En-
gland and Scotland.

gland and Scotland.
As the records of sport bear out,
pheasants are now shot in almost in
credible numbers. The commissariat
of London is annually enriched by over
eighty thousand brace of these delicious
table birds. As many will probably be
required in the provinces.
Although the Prince of Wales is by
no means first among the breeders, on
his estate of Sandringham and the adj
joining property of Castle Risingham,
which he has leased for sporting pur-
poses, as many as seven thousand five
hundred pheasants are usually provided
by his Royal Highness for his sporting
friends. In two or three of the dukeries,
and on other large estates as well, i'm
mense pains are taken to insure abund-
ant supplies of the bird of Colchis. The
killing of from two thousand to four
thousand birds at one battue has often
been recorded, and it is on record that
nine thousand five hundred were shot
during one season at Elvedon, in Nor
folk, which has an area of seventeen
thousand acres, and where all kinds of
game used to be bred for sale by the
Maharajah Dhuleep Sing. There are
other game farms, as they are called,
in various parts of England, and there
is at least one such place in Scotland,
situated on the Marquis of Ailsa's es-
tate in Ayrshire, and connected with it
there is also an interesting suite of pisci-
cultural ponds.
Great pains are annually taken to keep
up the pheasant supplies, as well as the
supplies of cartridges. There are prob
ably not less than two thousand estates
in the kingdom on which from five hun
dred to ten thousand pheasants are an
nually reared for general sport and for
the November and Christmas battues.
There are dealers who supply either
eggs or chicks. Some immense orders
are executed by these persons, the eggs
varying in price as the laying season
advances. These eggs are usually
placed under barn-door fowls, to be
Matched under the personal superintend-
ence of the keepers and their women
kind, and the tending of the sitting
hens-there are of course hundreds of
them-involves an immensely of trouble,
second only to the ceaseless trouble
which attends the rearing of the chicks.
large percentage of which, even in
the best regulated pheasantries. are
doomed to death from ''gapes'' and
other causes. Among the wild bred
birds the mortality is still greater than
it is among those reared by the domes-
tic hens.
Every pheasant that is reared costs at
least half crown, although in some
seasons pheasants reach the markets in
such quantities that they do not bring
more than shilling head. An i'm
mense number of the eggs are annually
stolen by poachers, who dispose of
them to the more INSCRIPTIONS dealers,
who in town sell them to gentlemen or
their keepers. Careful keepers add
largely to their supplies by rob
bing the nests of the wild birds.
A hen lays, under natural cir
cumstances. from ten to six
teen eggs; but if an egg is every now
and then extracted, the pheasant lays
on, till probably as many as an extra
dozen of eggs is obtained. The pleas
ant is careless mother, and of every
dozen eggs she matches not more than
five birds will come to the gun. Lon
don World.