On Fox Island, in Puget Sound, there is an oriental Pheasant preserve. Mr. Frank Alling, the proprietor, is securing the co-operation of other land owners, and it promises to be a great success. The varieties of Pheasants which he is raising include all we have mentioned in this article, as well as the Copper, the Green, the Bronze, and the Asiatic Ring-necks, with a curiosity in the shape of a mule produced by crossing and recrossing the Copper and Asiatic Ring-necks. The mule hens are very beautiful, but their eggs will not hatch. Oriental Quails liberated on the island have increased quite rapidly. Among the many importations are small Bantams from Woo Sung, China, for hatching Pheasant eggs and rearing the young birds; Mandarin Ducks, from Japan, (see BIRDS, Vol. I, p. 9); Wild Peacocks and Bleeding Heart Pigeons, from Calcutta, India, and Manila, respectively. In England within recent years the practice of bringing up Pheasants by hand has been extensively followed, and the numbers so reared, says Newton, vastly exceed those that are bred at large. The eggs are collected from birds that are either running wild or kept in a mew, and are placed under domestic hens; but, though these prove most attentive foster-mothers, much additional care on the part of the keepers is needed to insure the arrival at maturity of the chicks; for, being necessarily crowded in a comparatively small space, they are subject to several diseases which often carry off a large proportion, to say nothing of the risk they run of not being provided with proper food or of meeting an early death from some predatory animal. As they advance in age the young Pheasants readily take to a wild life, and indeed can only be kept from wandering in every direction by being plentifully supplied with food, which has to be scattered for them in the places in which it is desired that they should stay. [Illustration: From col. Chi. Acad. Sciences. SILVER PHEASANT. 1/4 Life-size. Copyright by Nature Study Pub. Co., 1898, Chicago.] EIDER DUCK FARMS The Fluffy Feathers Gathered in Iceland. All accounts I have read about Eider Ducks say that nests are robbed of their down twice, the duck supplying it each time from her own body; the third time the drake gives his white down, and this is allowed to remain, declares a writer in _Good Words_. But I was told by farmers in Iceland that now they never take the down until the little ones are hatched. It has been found that the birds thrive better and increase faster when they are allowed to live as nature meant them to. So now the poor mothers are no longer obliged to strip themselves of all their down to refurnish their despoiled nests. Sometimes, if the quantity is very great, a little may be taken, but enough must be left to cover the eggs when the duck leaves her nest for food.