70 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE 



of the population acquiesce willingly enough in the 

 preservation of partridges and other feathered game ; 

 although, if the truth were known, we suspect that 

 ' Donald ' often finds the temptation to appropriate 

 to his own use the covey of partridges that have 

 been reared upon his croft too strong for human 

 nature to resist successfully. Latterly, a certain sec- 

 tion of the pious agitators who have done so much 

 to demoralise the minds of the lower-class Scotch 

 have hit upon the ingenious expedient of claiming 

 that all feathered game belongs to the small tenants 

 of the soil. But, after all, the fault of breaking the 

 tenth commandment lies at the door of some of our 

 most eminent statesmen, and poaching partridges is, 

 in truth, a venial sin compared with the robbing of 

 churches or defrauding owners of property of the 

 legitimate returns of their capital. 



We have seldom found the poacher to be a man 

 of much mental cultivation. You would fancy that 

 he possessed a perfect wealth of woodland law, but 

 erroneously. Individual poachers, like our Essex 

 friend, do acquire a marvellously correct knowledge 

 of the habits of all woodland creatures, whether they 

 carry fur or feather, and can interpret to you the 

 cries of every animal to be found within their 

 favourite haunts. But the typical poacher is a 



