220 PKAIRIE AND FOREST. 



timber, or open country, is capable of standing cold, is not 

 quarrelsome with other game, and is very prolific, frequently 

 hatching two broods in a season. Moreover, an advantage 

 which cannot be too highly estimated, is that it never gets 

 so wild as to rise so far from your dogs as to be out of 

 gunshot, a nuisance that all are so well aware of in our 

 home-bred bird towards the end of the season. In fact, 

 who that shoots regularly cannot remember instances of our 

 partridge disappearing over the far side of a field as soon as 

 the sportsman had entered it ? Now, in years of experi- 

 ence in America, I never saw an instance of this kind ; up 

 to the commencement of the close season they would 

 remain almost as tame as they were at the termination of 

 the previous one. A reason for this may be that they 

 seldom pack : only once or twice have I seen more than 

 the usual number of a covey together, and then remarked 

 that the weather had been unusually severe and stormy. 



A peculiarity, however, this bird possesses is that in wet 

 and slushy weather it will frequently when disturbed take 

 shelter on the limbs of trees, from which if flushed they 

 afford the hardest possible shots. In the open it is by no 

 means easy to hit, for its flight is very strong and swift, 

 and frequently iiregular, but it does not go far, so that a 

 good marker seldom has much trouble to re-find it. Some 

 persons are under the impression that this ortix is migra- 

 tory; however, this is a mistake, for, although they may 

 wander from their breeding-place, from constant attention 

 I am convinced that the change of quarters is caused from 

 scarcity of food. On the edges of the dry prairies in 

 Southern Illinois, in early autumn, this bird abounds ; in 



