'04 A HISTORY OF 



its preservation, no way harmonizing with the general spirit of the 

 English Legislation. What can be more arbitrary than to talk of 

 preserving the game, which when defined, means no more than that 

 the poor shall abstain from what the rich have taken a fancy to keep 

 to themselves ? If these birds could, like a cock or a hen, be made 

 legal property, could they be taught to keep within certain districts 

 and only feed on those grounds that belong to the man whose enter- 

 tainments they improve, it then might, with some show of justice, be 

 admitted, that as a man fed them, so he might claim them. But this 

 is not the case ; nor is it in any man's power to lay a restraint upon 

 the liberty of these birds, that when let loose, put no limits to theii 

 excursions. They feed every where ; upon every man's ground ; 

 and no man can say these birds are only fed by me. Those birds 

 which are nourished by all, belong to all ; nor can any one man, or 

 any set of men, lay claim to them, when still continuing in a state of 

 nature. 



1 never walked out about the environs of Paris, that I did not con- 

 sider the immense quantity of game that was running almost tame on 

 every side of me, as a badge of the slavery of the people ; and what 

 they wished me to observe as an object of triumph, I always regarded 

 with a kind of secret compassion ; yet this people have no game-laws 

 for the remoter parts of the kingdom ; the game is only preserved in 

 a few places for the king, and is free in most places else. In England 

 the prohibition is general, and the peasant has not a right to what 

 even slaves, as he is taught to call them, are found to possess. 



Of partridges there are two kinds, the gray and the red. The red 

 partridge is the largest of the two, and often perches upon trees ; the 

 gray, with which we are best acquainted in England, is most prolific, 

 and always keeps on the ground. 



The partridge seems to be a bird well known all over the world, as 

 it is found in every country, and in every climate ; as well in the fro- 

 zen regions about the pole, as the torrid tracts under the equator. It 

 even seems to adapt itself to the nature of the climate where it resides 

 In Greenland the partridge, which is brown in summer, as soon as 

 the icy winter sets in, begins to take a covering suited to the season : 

 it is then clothed with a warm down beneath, and its outward plumage 

 assumes the colour of the snows amongst which it seeks its food. 

 Thus it is doubly fitted for the place, by the warmth and the colour 

 of its plumage; the one to defend it from the cold, the other to pre- 

 vent its being noticed by the enemy. Those of Barakonda, on the 

 other hand, are longer-legged, much swifter of foot, and choose the 

 highest rocks and precipices to reside in. 



They all, however, agree in one character, of being immoderately 

 addicted to venery ; and, as some writers affirm, often to an unnatural 

 degree. It is certain the male will pursue the hen even to her nest, 

 and will break her eggs, rather than not indulge his inclinations. 

 Though the young ones have kept together in flocks during the win- 

 ter, when they begin to pair in Spring, their society disperses, and 

 combats, very terrible with respect to each other, ensue. Their man- 

 ners, in other circumstances, resemble all those of poultry in general, 

 but their cunning and instincts seem superior to those of the largei 

 kinds Perhaps, as they live in the very neighbourhood of their eno. 



