THE COMMON PARTEIDGE. 187 



Houliston ? " replied his grey-headed friend. " Aye, weel 

 do I," added the Doctor. " Do you mind yon Sunday when 

 we fand the Paitrick's nest and harried her ? " 



The young, which are hatched in twenty-one days, are 

 attended to by both of the old birds, who show the greatest 

 care for their safety, and often flutter away on being 

 approached as if they could not fly, to draw the attention 

 of the intruder from their offspring. The Partridge may be 

 found on its feeding grounds in the morning and evening, 

 but during the day it is generally concealed in cover of 

 some kind, such as turnips, corn, or rough herbage. 



Its food consists of insects and seeds of weeds of various 

 kinds, as well as fallen grain which it picks up on the 

 stubbles. 



With regard to the means of distinguishing the sexes in 

 this bird by the colours of the plumage, Mr. W. E. Ogilvie- 

 Grant, of the British Museum, writes : — 



"The only reliable characters by which a male Par- 

 tridge may always be distinguished from a female, except 

 when very young, are two. 



"(1) In the male the sides of the neck are brownish- 

 grey, or nearly pure slate colour, with fine wavy lines of 

 black, and none of the feathers have pale buff stripes down 

 the shaft. 



" In the female these parts are olive-brown, and almost 

 all the feathers have a pale buff stripe down the shaft, often 

 somewhat dilated or club-shaped towards the extremity, 

 fiinely margined with black. 



" (2) In the male the ground colour of the terminal 

 half of the lesser and median wing coverts is pale olive- 

 brown, with a chestnut patch on one or both webs, and each 

 feather has a narrow pale buff shaft-stripe, and narrow 

 wavy transverse black lines. 



"In the female the ground colour of these parts is 



