808 MANUAL OF MODERN FARRIERY. 



tridge. They seem to prefer waste lands, interspersed with 

 bushes, commons, and heaths, although they are to be met 

 with in turnip-fields. 



As an object of pursuit the red-legged partridge is not 

 much esteemed by sportsmen. They are strong upon the 

 wing, and generally more wild than the common partridge, 

 and it is consequently much more difiicult to get within 

 gun-shot of them. They run before a pointer or setter like an 

 old cock grouse, and unless they can be driven into furze, or 

 some other such thick bottom, through which they cannot 

 thread their way, there is but little chance of a shot. 

 When wounded they will take shelter in a rabbit-burrow, or 

 any other hole they meet with. Mr. Daniel mentions, that 

 he found a covey of them, consisting of fourteen, which he 

 met with near Colchester ; they were in a very thick field of 

 turnips, and for half-an-hour bafiled the exertions of a brace 

 of pointers to make them take wing, and the first that did 

 so immediately perched on the hedge, and was shot in that 

 situation, without its being known what bird it was ; a 

 leash more of them was at length sprung and killed by ano- 

 ther person. For twenty-three years thereafter he never 

 shot one. He was then at Sud bourn with a gentleman who 

 was particularly anxious to kill a red-legged partridge, and 

 hunted with a brace of capital pointers for them only : the 

 instant the dogs stood, the birds ran and always took wing 

 (notwithstanding all the speed exerted to head them) at such 

 distances as to be out of the range of the shot from any 

 fowling-piece. Upon the same grounds, and on that same 

 day they laid until the springing spaniels (with which Mr. 

 Daniel was shooting) almost touched them before they arose, 

 and in a short time he killed two brace and a half of them. 



The flesh of the red-legged partridge is white, but more 

 dry than that of the common partridge, and consequently not 



