EVERLASTING QUESTION 125 



by their use the keeper can have his 

 sitting birds more or less where he would 

 like them to be. The hen sitting close 

 on her nest certainly has little scent to 

 betray her whereabouts, yet she is by no 

 means immune, for the fox often manages 

 to find her somehow, whether from the 

 hen omitting the precaution of flying on 

 and off the nest, or simply from sheer 

 perseverance in hunting the hedgerow. 



But all these questions, and matters 

 such as the protection of sitting birds 

 during the last days of incubation, when 

 they are so readily winded, the dangers 

 of dead chicks in the nest and so forth, 

 come more properly within the sphere of 

 partridges and their preservation than in 

 the scope of these pages. 



For unless the Euston system be 

 adopted (into the details of which it is 

 not proposed to enter here,^ since with 

 pheasants the results are scarcely worth 

 the labour involved) the wild pheasant can 



1 For a full account of the Euston system see Partridges 

 and Partridge Manors, p. 108 et sequitur. 



