THE BLACK GROUSE AXD THE PARTRIDGE. 163 



tive insects. Perhaps England is the only 

 country in the world where they are prosperous 

 and happy. In other countries, if man does not 

 destroy them himself in their breeding season, 

 he allows their enemies to do so. 



Through the whole of India, from where we 

 left the railway, seventy miles from Bombay, 

 to where we joined it three years later, two 

 hundred miles from Calcutta, we never found 

 the beautiful painted partridge or the common 

 partridge at all numerous, although they scarcely 

 ever died by the hand of man. 



The grandsons of our present merchant 

 princes will, no doubt, preserve large tracks in 

 India, for sport the Anglo-Saxon must and will 

 have, and they wiU bag 150 brace of peacocks 

 a day and send them home in ice by the 

 Persian railway. We should like nothing better 

 than to preserve certain tracks of country we 

 remember. Visiting our traps would require 

 caution — a young tiger in one, an hysena in 

 the other,— and the services of the real tisrer 



