PARTRIDGES AS PETS 49 



sound, and rising on the wing with their charac- 

 teristic whirr, swept away across the fields and out of 

 sight. The noon came and went, but the birds did 

 not return. Mr. Hutchings instituted an anxious 

 search for them in their favourite fields, but to no 

 purpose. 



' I heard,' he writes, ' the reports of guns in a dis- 

 tant field, which awoke me to a full consciousness of 

 the jeopardy of my pets. Three, four, five o'clock 

 came, yet my birds did not. The sun began to cast 

 his beams of golden hue over the tops of the trees in 

 the distant wood, but no sound of my covey assailed 

 my listening ears. A little before sunset my doubts 

 and anxiety grew into something like a certainty that 

 my covey had been half killed and the rest scattered, 

 and the one that made the odd number, whichever 

 that might be, was panting with agony, feeling the 

 torture of a broken leg or wing, or both, dying of un- 

 known quantities of pain under some unsympathising 

 clod, when suddenly a whirring in the air scattered 

 my fears, and in a moment the whole covey swept just 

 over our heads and settled in the courtyard, with a 

 rush and flurry that made us all jump with delight. 

 In a few minutes the whole covey went into their 

 domicile and were made prisoners for life.' l 

 1 FieU, Oct. i, 1881. 



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