106 PHASIANIUJ:. 



unfolding the nature of soils, have each in turn induced the 

 cultivation of various tracts of ground unploughed before ; 

 and as the labours of the agriculturists encroach ujjon the 

 boundaries of the moor, the Grouse retires, and the Partridge 

 takes its place upon the land : the districts best cultivated, 

 and producing the most corn, frequently also producing the 

 greatest number of Partridges. 



Of a bird so universally known, little that is new can be 

 said ; with its appearance and its habits almost all are 

 familiar. These birds pair in February ; but seldom begin 

 to lay eggs till towards the end of April or the beginning of 

 May ; a slight depression in the ground, with a few dead 

 leaves or dried grass bents scratched together, serves for a 

 nest ; and the place chosen is sometimes only a few yards 

 from a public footpath. Occasionally, also, the nest of a 

 Partridge is found in a situation the least likely to be occu- 

 pied by a bird so decidedly terrestrial in its habits. In 

 Daniel's ' Rural Sports,' it is recorded that a Partridge made 

 her nest on the top of an oak pollard ; and this tree had 

 one end of the bars of a stile, where there was a footpath, 

 fastened into it, and by the passengers going over the stile 

 before she sat close, she was disturbed, and first discovered. 

 She there hatched sixteen eggs ; and her. brood, scrambling 

 down the short and rough ground which grew out all round 

 from the trunk of the tree, reached the ground in safety. 

 The eggs of the Partridge are, however, mostly deposited 

 among brushwood or long grass, or in fields of clover and 

 standing corn ; they are generally of a uniform olive-brown 

 colour, but pale blue or whitish varieties are not very un- 

 common : they measure about 1'45 byl'l in., and from twelve 

 to twenty are produced by one female. Twenty-eight eggs 

 in one instance, and thirty-three eggs in two other instances, 

 are recorded as having been found in one nest ; but there is 

 little doubt in these cases that more than one bird had laid 

 eggs in the same nest. In one of the instances recorded, in 

 which the nest with thirty-three eggs was in a fallow field, 

 twenty-three young birds were hatched out and went off with 

 the old ones, and four of the eggs left behind had live birds 



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