PARTRIDGE SHOOTING. 79 



also imported many thousands of their eggs, and 

 have hred them, and turned them out on their 

 manors. It is said that there are ahundance of these 

 red birds on Lord Hertford's estate, in Suffolk. 

 They have lately been killed in the southern and 

 south-eastern counties. Their flesh is white, and 

 can never be esteemed as good eating as the common 

 bird ; but they prove an adorning variety, and pleasant 

 addition of plumage, in the parks of the game-pre- 

 servers. They are in plenty in the isles of Jersey 

 and Guernsey ; and it is supposed, that some birds 

 have made a flight, and alighted on our coasts from 

 these islands. They do not appear ever to have been 

 naturalized in Scotland or Ireland. They are used 

 in Cyprus as game-cocks, here and elsewhere, for the 

 amiable purpose of butchering each other. It swarms 

 in the island of Nansis to such a degree, as to be 

 a great nuisance to the people of the place, who are 

 compelled to collect the eggs for destiiiction, in 

 order to obtain a chance of saving their harvests 

 from the little creature's rapacity. Imagine a coun- 

 try where a man leads thousands of partridges about 

 like sheep ; not, certainly, on the ground, but hover- 

 ing over his head, and alighting around him to 

 repose ! Yet such is the account given of the par- 

 tridge-land round Trebizond. In Provence, this col- 

 lecting together partridge-flocks, takes place in a 

 smaller degree. " A certain Sussex man," relates 

 Willoughby, " had, by his industiy, made a covey of 

 partridges so tame, that he drove them before him, 



