346 TETRAONID.E. 



They foot away before a pointer like an old Cock Grouse ; 

 and unless the sportsman can drive them into furze, or some 

 other such thick bottom, through which they cannot thread 

 their way, but little chance of success attends him. When 

 wounded, they will run to ground in a rabbit-burrow, or any 

 other hole they can find. 



Occasionally they perch in trees, and have been seen on 

 the upper bar of a gate, or the top of a lift of paling. Mr. 

 Daniel mentions that the covey of fourteen which he found 

 near Colchester, were in a very thick piece of turnips, and for 

 half an hour baffled the exertions of a brace of good pointers 

 to make them take wing ; and the first which did so imme- 

 diately perched on the hedge, and was shot in that situation, 

 without its being known what bird it was ; a leash more were 

 at length sprung from the turnips and shot ; and two days 

 after a brace more were killed by another person. Some 

 years after, when out at Sudbourn with a gentleman who was 

 particularly anxious to kill some of these Red-legged Par- 

 tridges, and hunted with a brace of capital pointers for them 

 only, the instant the dogs stood, the red birds ran, and 

 always took wing, notwithstanding all the speed exerted to 

 head them, at such distances as to be out of the range of 

 shot ; yet upon the same ground, and on the same day, after 

 changing the mode of shooting, these birds lay to some 

 springing spaniels till the dogs almost touched them before 

 they rose, and two brace and a half were killed. The flesh 

 of the Red-legged Partridge is white, but rather more dry, 

 and not so much in request as that of the Common Par- 

 tridge. The red bird has been known to breed in confine- 

 ment, which the Common Partridge does not. 



This bird is not an inhabitant of Germany or Holland, 

 according to Continental authors, but it is found in France, 

 Provence, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and is probably con- 

 founded sometimes with two other species of Red-legged 



