PARTRIDGES. 



pursuers before they rise, turning backwards and forwards, and 

 round and round, twisting about the trees in such a manner as to 

 make it difficult to follow up the footmarks, and but for the assist- 

 ance of dogs familiar with the sport, the keenest eye is of ten foiled." 



Captain Head thus describes his first meeting with one of 

 these birds : 



" The snow in the woods was crisp from the night's frost and the 

 sun was just rising in a clear sky, when the marks of game attracted 

 my notice, and my spaniel at the same time evinced the most eager 

 interest and curiosity in the pursuit, quartering the ground from 

 right to left. After walking about half an hour, he suddenly quested, 

 and on goii|f up to him I found him at the edge of a swamp, among 

 a clump of white cedar-trees, to one of which he had evidently 

 tracked some description of bird ; for he was looking steadfastly up 

 into the tree, and barking with the utmost eagerness. I looked 

 attentively, but nothing whatever could I discover. I walked round 

 the tree, and round again ; then observed the dog, whose eyes were 

 evidently directly iixed upon the object itself ; and still was I dis- 

 appointed in perceiving nothing. In the meantime, the dog, working 

 himself up to a pitch of impatience and violence, tore with his paws 

 the trunk of the tree, and bit the rotten sticks and bark, jumping 

 and springing up at intervals towards the game : and five minutes 

 had at least elapsed in this manner, when all at once I saw the eye 

 of the bird. There it sat, or rather stood, just where Rover pointed, 

 in an attitude so perfectly still and fixed with an outstretched neck, 

 and a body drawn out to such an unnatural length, that twenty 

 times must I have overlooked it, mistaking it for a dead branch, 

 which it most closely resembled. It was about twenty feet from the 

 ground, on a bough, and sat eight or ten feet from the body of the 

 tree. I shot it, and in the course of the morning killed four more, 

 which I came upon much in the same way as I did upon the first. 

 At one of these my gun flashed three times, without its attempting 

 to move ; after which I drew the charge, loaded again, and killed it. 

 The dog all the time was barking and baying with the greatest per- 

 severance. There is, in fact, no limit to the stupidity of these crea- 

 tures; and it is by no means unusual, on finding a whole covey on a tree 

 in the autumn, to begin by shooting the bird which happens to sit low- 

 est, and then to drop the one above him, and so on till all are killed."* 



Very different, indeed, from our straggling coveys, are the 

 assemblages of these birds in America. Near Fort Churchill, 

 on the shores of Hudson's Bay, in the whiter season, they may 

 be seen by thousands feeding on the willow-tops, peeping 

 above the surface of the snow. The crew of a vessel winter- 

 * CAPTAIN HEAD'S Forest Scenery. 



