316 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 
The eggs are of a pale yellow-brown ground 
colour, spotted rather thickly with darker reddish 
brown spots. be 
ParrrinGE, Perdix cinerea. The Partridge is 
pretty common throughout the county; in good 
breeding seasons indeed it 1s very numerous, but a 
cold hard late winter and a wet spring and summer 
make all the difference in the sort of sport to be 
expected in September; but if they are fairly treated 
and not shot too closely down in the bad seasons 
there generally seem Partridges enough left to keep 
up the numbers, which would hardly be the case 
with Pheasants without artificial help. Very mode- 
rate game-preserving indeed seems to be sufficient 
to keep up a good stock of Partridges: if the keeper 
only takes care to keep down the quadruped vermin, 
which are the most destructive, such as cats, stoats 
and polecats, and can keep the birds from the net 
of the poacher,—for the net seems the only very 
destructive way in which Partridges are poached,— 
he will have very little other trouble, as these birds 
will generally find food for themselves: this consists 
mostly of grain of various kinds, wheat, barley and 
oats, the seeds of various weeds, and a few insects 
and worms; ants and their eggs form the favourite 
food of the young, and indeed in bringing them up 
by hand this food seems almost necessary. 
The nest is a slight hole scratched in the ground, 
and the eggs, which are numerous, are usually 
