PARTRIDGE. 143 



tivated land; sometimes in holes of decayed trees, as 

 much as three or four feet from the ground, and even 

 on the top of hay-stacks : I have been told of a nest 

 placed in this situation, the brood hatched, and safely 

 reared. Another I have heard of under the post of a 

 hand-gate, which was turned whenever passengers went 

 backwards and forwards through it. A brace of 

 Partridges have been known, their own nest having 

 been destroyed, to take up with the nest and eggs of 

 a pair of Pheasants, the hen of which had been killed, 

 on the estate of Colonel Burgoyne, in Essex. The 

 hen bird alone sits, the male keeping watch, and when 

 the young are hatched he joins the covey, and protects 

 and feeds them with the dam. 



The eggs, which are of a pale greenish brown 

 colour, are laid towards the end of May or the beginning 

 of June, and are usually ten or twelve in number, but 

 sometimes as many as fifteen, eighteen, or even twenty. 

 The 'Norfolk News' mentions a nest hatched at Ditch- 

 ingham between the i3th. and i8th. of April, 1851. 

 Twenty-two eggs are recorded to have been found in 

 one nest, and thirty-one in another, two hen birds 

 having occupied the same one, and in the former in- 

 stance the cock bird gathered half of the united family 

 under his wings, the pair sitting side by side, but 

 looking different ways. In two other instances thirty- 

 three eggs are recorded as having been found in one 

 nest, but there is little doubt that they were con- 

 tributed by more than one bird. In one of these 

 twenty-three young were hatched and went off, and 

 four of the other eggs had live birds in them. The 

 young leave the nest almost as soon as they are 

 hatched. Incubation lasts about twenty-one days, 

 beginning usually in June, about the 2Oth. as has been 



