NATURAL HISTORY 29 



conditions you may with tolerable cer- 

 tainty forecast the progress of events, 

 with the French partridges it is quite 

 otherwise. In the first instance, they 

 may travel miles before they happen on 

 a nesting-place which suits their wayward 

 taste; then they will lay their eggs at 

 quite uncertain intervals of time, and 

 desert the nest at any moment for no 

 accountable reason. Even when sitting, 

 they will suddenly leave eggs on the 

 verge of hatching, stay away for days 

 together, and unexpectedly come back 

 to hatch off a brood, just when the nest 

 has been written down as a failure. 



While they have earned a bad reputa- 

 tion as mothers, they will often astonish 

 the world in general by successfully bring- 

 ing up a large family in a happy-go- 

 lucky sort of way. For some reason 

 they seem to suffer less from wet seasons 

 than English birds, and often do fairly 

 well when all the chances seem against 

 them. 



Finally, just as was the case with our 



