232 FARMING FOR LADIES. [chap. x. 



entirely abandon their former home, their 

 haunts being always around the house, and, 

 in hard weather, they will approach it with 

 the confidence of receiving food. They crow 

 like a cock, and their life is supposed not to 

 extend beyond six or seven years : this, how- 

 ever, they seldom reach ; the hen may, indeed, 

 sometimes complete the term of her existence, 

 for no true sportsman will shoot her, but the 

 cock seldom escapes the fate described in 

 Pope's Windsor Forest — 



" See ! from the brate the whirring Pheasant springs, 

 And mounts exulting on triumphant wings ; 

 Short is his joy, he feels the fiery wound. 

 Flutters in blood, and panting, paints the ground." 



The eggs of the Partridge are also some- 

 times put under a bantam-hen, as the nests 

 are frequently found in the fields, and one was 

 once discovered in our presence by the mowers 

 of a meadow, containing the extraordinary 

 number of twenty-two chicks. The mother — 

 with that hallowed instinct which teaches her 

 to protect her offspring at the risk of life — 

 actually clung to them while the work was 

 going on around her, until by a stroke of the 

 scythe, her head was severed from her body. 



