GROUSE SIIOOTIXG. 91 



where tliey may be healthy and strong, and we know 

 that when the grouse pack, generally in the month of 

 November, they are extremely wild, and take long flights. 

 The most plausible reason for grouse diminishing in 

 size, may, I think, be accounted for when they have 

 suffered severely from one or two winters, during which 

 they have found much difficulty in procuring a sufficiency 

 of food, and the spring of 1856 was most severe, and 

 therefore tends to corroborate this theory. Partridges 

 suffer sometimes from a rigorous winter. I recollect 

 shooting a brace near Windsor, about Christmas, they 

 were in the most wretched condition, as the term is, 

 " as light as a feather," from starvation. I threw them 

 away. I have never heard that either pheasants or 

 partridges have degenerated, although they are so nu- 

 merous in Norfolk and Suffolk ; I have heard sportsmen 

 say, indeed I have found it myself, that in preserves the 

 former are sometimes so well fed and become so fat 

 that the beaters and dogs find some difficulty in making 

 them rise. On my property in Cambridgeshire par- 

 tridges were numerous, large, and of an excellent 

 flavour, so much so, that on my coming to England 

 from Gfascony, where we resided, Mrs. H. requested me 

 on my return, to bring her three or four brace of these 

 partridges, which I did, by having them potted, and 

 they were found very superior in flavour to those in that 

 part of France. I mention this circumstance to controvert 

 the opinion that game degenerates from a coimtr}'- 

 being well stocked with it. 



In the short peace of 1802, Baron Hompercli's regi- 

 ment of Hussars, in which I was major, was disbanded, 

 in consequence of which I found myself for the first 

 time for several years out of harness during the summer. 



