422 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



am credibly informed that in the same localities, some 

 thirty years ago, from forty to fifty brace a day were 

 not unfrequently killed. 



The testimony of all practical ornithologists is 

 unquestionably in favour of the useful qualities of 

 the partridge;* indeed, as Mr. St. John remarks, 

 "most if not all granivorous birds amply repay the 

 farmer for their food by the quantity of weeds they 

 destroy during a great part of the year. An exami- 

 nation of the. crops and gizzards of many examples, 

 and at different seasons, has proved their chief suste- 

 nance to be grasses and their seeds, the leaves of 

 various noxious weeds, insects, and even mosses, 

 but although most plentiful in cultivated districts and 

 extending their range with an increased breadth of corn 

 land, the cereal crops in summer and early autumn are 

 sought rather as a shelter for themselves and nestlings 

 than for the attractions of the soft grain. As soon, 



county was almost unprecedented in modern times. In the former 

 year, within four miles of Norwich, two good shots killed forty- 

 six brace of birds, in one day, out of two fields of turnips of not 

 more than forty acres in extent and the adjoining stubbles. 



* Thompson, in his "Birds of Ireland," quotes the following 

 passage from J. Burn Murdock's " Observations on the game and 

 game laws" with reference to this species : " I do not believe they 

 even pull a single ear of corn from the stalk ; it is only after the 

 stubbles are cleared of the crop that they even feed upon grain at 

 all. In summer, insects and seeds of grasses, and in winter the 

 leaves of weeds and coarse grasses from below the hedges, consti- 

 tute their food; in the latter season they become upon such 

 nutriment exceedingly fat. During the continuance of a severe 

 frost, and when the ground has been covered to a considerable 

 depth by snow, I have repeatedly examined the crops both of 

 partridges and pheasants, and found them filled with the leaves of 

 grasses which grow by the edges of springs and water-rills that 

 have not been frozen ; and the birds on such occasions were in fact 

 fatter than at any other season of the year." 



