A day's outing in search of the ARBTJTrS. 



55 



dramming place of partridges for several consecutive 

 years. I was just in time to see the performer walk 

 across a path a few feet from the log, and soon I heard 

 his wings as he flew to another part of the woods. 

 The drummer is a wary bird at these times, and one 

 seldom gets a sight of him at his performance, l^o 

 other sound in nature, except, perhaps, the honking of 

 Avild geese as they fly northward or southward in their 

 wedge-shaped flocks, so thrills me as the drumming of 

 the partridge ; the sensations produced are undefinable, 

 as the cause is unexplainable. Association may have 

 much to do with it, as in these later years the sound 

 always carries my thoughts back to the maple 

 woods of the old homestead on the hillside, when this 

 was the sweetest music that cheered the boys at their 

 toilsome but wholesome sugar-making. Then I knew 

 every drumming log for miles around, and every spring 

 I kept watch and ward of at least a half dozen nests 

 of these attractive birds. 



Who that loves nature can help loving the partridge ? 

 not in the pot, but in the woods. It is such a hand- 

 some bird, hardy and innocent, and as Thoreau says, 

 "like a russet link extending over from autumn to 

 spring, preserving unbroken the choir of summer." If 

 left unmolested for a few years what an added charm they 

 would give to all the woods. They are not in any way 

 trespassers on man's products. Why not let them alone 

 in their forest retreats that ought to be sacred to them ? 

 I remember a brood that I had watched with boyish 

 pride all summer; I had found the nest when there 



