PARTRIDGES, PHEASANTS, HARES, ETC. 79 



at once make convex or wedge-shaped, a formation that forces 

 plenty of game to break to right or left, and so to escape quite 

 out of the direction of the beat. 



In many parts of Scodand partridges are shot to dogs, 

 for there the root-crops rarely fail, while at times they are even 

 too strong ; in addition, there is such a quantity of other cover 

 in the shape of whin, bracken, etc., that birds will lie to 

 dogs right up to the end of December. Owing to the lateness 

 of the harvest across the Border, partridge shooting is rarely in 

 full swing until the middle of September, and more often 

 than not it is even a fortnight later before the birds can be gone 

 at systematically ; indeed, on the Carim shootings by Blackford, 

 in the autumn of 1877, we well remember watching corn being 

 cut on the first of November ! 



Great numbers of partridges in the North nest on the 

 heather, and even though they will come to the corn and 

 turnips for food during the day, they return nightly to the 

 heather to "jug"; and for a true and realistic idea of such 

 sort of ground one look at Millais' beautiful painting, " The 

 Fringe of the Moor," will tell my readers of what is in my 

 mind better than anything that can be penned. Birds thus 

 bred are of a much finer flavour than purely lowland ones, and 

 gourmets have been heard to maintain that a young heather- 

 bred partridge is the best of all winged game for the table. 



As a specimen of a good Scotch bag, I may state that in 

 this past season of 189 1, on the shootings of Pitfour, in Aber- 

 deenshire, now leased from Colonel Ferguson by Mr, Frank 

 Lawson, he with three other friends, of which I had the good 

 luck to be one, commencing on the first of October, bagged in 

 the open in ten short days of walking in line — 7 grouse, ']'] 

 pheasants, 685 partridges, 203 brown hares, 615 rabbits, 6 

 snipe, 8 ducks, 17 various — total, 1,618 head. 



A spaniel is preferable to a retriever for recovering any 

 "little brown birds" that may be winged, as in high turnips or 

 other thick cover the former will of necessity have his nose 



