A GAME FARM IN AUGUST.
IT has been noted as an unexplained fact in natural history, that while large poultry farms are as a rule unsuccessful, most game, with the exception of grouse, can be reared in any quantity with very little risk of disease. Farms on light soil can be converted into game colonies in a short time and with little trouble, and if the remuneration is not great, the risk and outlay are also inconsiderable. Situation is the most important element of success in all artificial experiments to increase natural production. The centre and sanctuary of a recently established game colony visited by the writer forms a portion of the most ancient down. land of Wessex, covered with natural grass and studded with clumps and single trees of thorn, elder, ash, and seedling-fir. This natural growth of trees is peculiar to the hollows of the high downs. Where it occurs, winged game of all kinds seek it during the heat of the day, and rabbits and hares exhibit a particular liking for its scanty cover, and travel considerable distances to restock it if from any cause its native inhabitants are killed down or driven away. Some fifty acres of this favourite ground, lying not in a hollow, but on a gently sloping hillside on the inner uplands of the downs, has been inclosed as a sanctuary. A fence of wire-netting 4 ft. high, boarded at the bottom, and supported by a wire-cord run- ning along the top, forma the outer defence of the precinct, and converts the whole interior into a protected warren suitable for an innumerable population of rabbits, and for hares, if the latter are supplied with artificial food. The latter can easily leap the fence, which only forms an inclosure for the rabbits and very young game birds. But it acts as a protection against dogs, which, though able to leap over it, seldom do so unless in actual pursuit of game, while foxes look on it with suspicion, fearing a trap, and unless strongly tempted, prefer to seek their supper outside the lines of wire. The ground within the inclosure has undergone surface. change since it has been withdrawn from the tread of sheep and cattle and made the home of game. The looseness of the soil beneath the grass has attracted millions of ants, and acres of the inclosure are without a square yard of smooth ground, the ant-hills standing side by side like peas in a box. Wild thyme and a small yellow rock-rose have spread over the heaps, and covered them with a close netting of tiny leaves, and the whole surface looks from a distance like a grey-green quilted coverlet. Beneath and around the clumps of thorn and elder, rabbits burrow in thousands, and from these centres they spread, feeding outwards in regular circles, over the whole area of the warren. The steady grazing of the rabbits has also changed the character of the vegetation. Wild honeysuckle grows freely on this down-land, but the hungry rabbits gnaw the stems as soon as they begin to climb the gorse and thorn bushes. This constant nipping in the bud has acted upon the honeysuckle much as the daily pinching of young trees by Chinese gardeners does on the trees in the dwarfed gardens of Pekin. The honeysuckle has become a minute creeping-plant, covering the ground in level patches like the wild thyme and rock-rose. Some herbaceous plants suffer less from the rabbit's appetite than the hard- wood shrubs and bushes. Great masses of pink-flowering willow-herb stand in the warren. The plants look both green and succulent, but for some reason the rabbits refuse to touch them. The warren, populous as it is, forms only the outer fringe of the sanctuary. It plays the part of the native town in an Indian cantonment to the more precious inner circle in which the pheasants are reared and fed. More than a thou- sand of these birds, ranging in size from that of a half-grown chicken to that of the adult pheasant, though at present all clothed in the sober brown plumage of the immature bird, gather in this inclosure as feeding-time approaches, and -though dispersed during the day among the scattered clumps of thorns and firs, seldom wander at any time much beyond the limits of the outer rabbit-proof fence.
It has become the fashion to laugh at the modern practice of pheasant-breeding. But though there is little that is remarkable in the sight of scores of coops, each containing a hen and a dozen or more pheasant-chicks, in the spring and -early summer, by mid-August the scene has changed. The coops have disappeared, and the congregation of such a -multitude of artificially reared wild birds, attached voluntarily to a single spot, surrounded by the open and little-inhabited -downs, and enrolled for the time being in the ranks of domesti- -cated creatures, is a sight of no common interest to the naturalist. Their numbers are such that they are visible from a.considerable distance, and when viewed from one of the adja- centslopes the rounded backs of the columns and companies of pheasants wandering round the inclosure, or travelling in long lines and in single file along the rabbit paths, resemble the huge flocks of guinea-fowl which " trek " at sundown across the veldt to drink at some South African stream. As the afternoon advances the birds may be seen moving from every side towards the keeper's hut, where the stores of meal and water stand ready for mixing. The larger birds which have strayed beyond the inclosures take a short flight over the fences, the other troops unite and advance, and before long the whole surface of the warren near the huts is covered by (the crowd of pheasants, like a Zulu impi, in crescent formation with converging horns, moving towards the centre of their artificial food-supply. When the day's rations are given out it is no part of the keeper's plan to deliver it in one spot. 'The man and his assistant walk off rapidly in opposite directions casting the food right and left. The birds divide, following the feeders in a hurrying mass, which gradually lengthens out into a long line of feeding pheasants, stretching for several hundred yards across the warren. At this time they are often joined by full-grown wild pheasants from the ad- jacent copses. These meet with a very cold welcome from the young birds. Though quite indifferent to the presence of &Inman benign, the intruding pheasants wear an apologetic air when eating the bread of servitude among the tame birds, and submit to pecks and bullying with the utmost meekness.
The massing of such numbers of defenceless and appetising food-animals as pheasants and rabbits in a very limited area, and within the short space of a single breeding season, exer- cises the same attraction on their natural enemies as a vole plague or a locust swarm does in the ordinary course of Nature. Half-grown pheasants are dainty food, and helpless creatures, even when wild-bred. The tame birds are even more defenceless, and the good news of the feast which may be had at the cost of a little enterprise is circulated by some mysterious agency amongst all the robber tribes of the downs. In August the young of the three natural enemies of game common to the district—the sparrow-hawk, the fox, and the stoat—are full-grown, and having good appetites and little of the acquired caution of their elders, attack the birds with an acharnetnent which nothing but the strongest measures can foil. Respect for the hunt saves the lives of the foxes and cubs, though the constant watching by men and dogs, repairing of the wire-fence, and arrangement of "scarecrows," which daunt even a hungry cub, cost much time and toil. On the other hand, the fox is in one sense less dangerous than the hawk or stoat. He prefers quantity to quality, and though surrounded by pheasants, usually selects one of the old barn - door hens which have reared the broods. The sparrow - hawks can neither be scared, nor are they satisfied with anything less dainty than a half-grown pheasant. They migrate from the adjacent downs with the whole of their brood, often five or six in number, and gliding into the inclosure at daybreak, pick up from the ground the first poult they see. This goes on until the last of the brood is shot, not unfrequently in the act of picking up a bird within a few yards of the temporary watch- house. The boldness of the sparrow-hawks in the air Li matched by that of the stoats upon the ground. As the col n is cut they migrate to the warren and pheasantry, and will chase a rabbit almost to the keeper's feet, or attack the pheasants as they are feeding on meal just scattered by the hand.
Kestrels, owls, and hobbies are harmless to the birds in August, but the keepers urge a new objection to the owls and also to the nightjar. It has its origin entirely in the new conditions of extensive pheasant-breeding, and not in any vice inherent in the other birds. The regi- ments of young pheasants roost crowded thickly together in the trees. Being deprived of their natural parents, they are nervous at night and liable to panics. The nocturnal flight and calls of the owls and nightjars often frighten a number of young pheasants, and cause them to fly down from their trees. The others hear the rush and clatter of wings, and the panic spreads. Hundreds of the stupid birds are flying wildly in the dark, and next morning many are picked up dead or injured. Some break their necks by flying into the wire-netting, others smash their wings against branches of trees, and if the night be wet and cold, the backward birds often die in the damp grass in which they have roosted, because unable to fly into the trees in the darkness of the woods.
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