OF NATURE. 4i>9 



of Ashburnham's menagerie, where the summer duck, anas 

 sponsa, flew up and settled on the branch of an oak-tree in my 

 presence ; but whether any of them roost on trees in the 

 night, we are not informed by any author that I am ac- 

 quainted with. I suppose not, but that, like the rest of the 

 genus, they sleep on the water, where the birds of this genus 

 are not always perfectly secure, as will appear from the 

 following circumstance which happened in this neighbourhood 

 a few years since, as I was credibly informed. A female fox 

 was found in the morning drowned in the same pond in which 

 were several geese, and it was supposed that in the night the 

 fox swam into the pond to devour the geese, but was attacked 

 by the gander, which being most powerful in its own element, 

 buffeted the fox with its wing* about the head till it was 

 drowned. MARKWTCK. 



HEN PARTRIDGE. 



A hen partridge came out of a ditch, and ran along shiver- 

 ing 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 helpless 

 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 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 

 distance, 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 



