812 OBSERVATIONS OK BIRDS. 



and ran along shivering with her wings, and crying out as if 

 wounded and unable to get from us. While the dam acted 

 this distress, the boy who attended me saw her brood, that 

 was small and unable to fly, run for shelter into an old fox- 

 earth under the bank. So wonderful a power is instinct.* 



WHITE. 



It is not uncommon to see an old partridge feign itself 

 wounded, and run along on the ground fluttering and crying, 

 before either dog or man, to draw them away from its help- 

 less unfledged young ones. I have seen it often ; and once 

 in particular, I saw a remarkable instance of the old bird's 

 solicitude to save its brood. As I was hunting with a young 

 pointer, the dog ran on a brood of very small partridges ; the 

 old bird cried, fluttered, and ran tumbling along, just before 

 the dog's nose, till she had drawn him to a considerable dis- 

 tance, when she took wing and flew still farther off", but not 

 out of the field : on this the dog returned to me, near which 

 place the young ones lay concealed in the grass, which the 

 old bird no sooner perceived, than she flew back again to us, 

 settled just before the dog's nose again, and, by rolling and 

 tumbling about, drew off" his attention from her young, and 

 thus preserved her brood a second time. I have also seen, 

 when a kite has been hovering over a covey of young par- 

 tridges, the old birds fly up at the bird of prey, screaming 

 and fighting with all their might, to preserve their brood. 



MARKWICK. 



A HYBRID PHEASANT. Lord Stawell sent me, from the 

 great lodge in the Holt, a curious bird for my inspection. It 

 was found by the spaniels of one of his keepers in a coppice, 

 and shot on the wing. The shape, hair, and habit of the 

 bird, and the scarlet ring round the eyes, agreed well with 

 the appearance of a cock pheasant ; but then the head and 

 neck, and breast and belly, were of a glossy black ; and 



* It is, no doubt, a wonderful instinct, and at the same time a proof how 

 strongly Providence has implanted in animals the love of their young, which 

 neither fear nor the natural love of self-preservation seems to lessen. Mr. 

 Markwick's remarks on the fact mentioned by Mr. White are highly interesting 

 to every lover of nature. ED. 



