174 PARTRIDGES 



In a good year shooting continues to the end of the season. 

 The stock is judged while shooting. No special form of 

 disease has been noticed, though a few birds have been 

 picked up dead at different times. Three hundred brace a 

 day and over have been killed in good seasons, but of 

 late years the totals have come down to less than 100 brace 

 a day. Six thousand birds off 18,000 acres has been given 

 as a fair year's total at Orwell Park. Mr. Reader concludes 

 by saying : e ' I consider the recent failure of partridges to 

 be entirely due to bad weather, as we were never short of 

 partridges when the weather has been good. I have never 

 known so many bad seasons in succession, and I have been 

 here over thirty years." 



STRATTON, HAMPSHIRE 

 (Notes by the EARL OF NORTHBROOK.) 



Extent about 5000 acres, with a chalk subsoil ; on the 

 top of the hills there is some depth of clay. A large pro- 

 portion of the land is cultivated. The nesting ground 

 is natural, with the addition of a few belts planted. 

 All nests are found when possible and visited daily ; 

 the average number of eggs in a nest is 14. No 

 partridges are reared except very occasionally, when 

 nests are cut out in mowing. 



Eggs are changed from nests on one part of the ground 

 to another, and we also exchange eggs with neighbours 

 and with friends in other counties. We have turned 

 down Hungarians on three or four occasions, but I cannot 

 say with any marked result, though they certainly have 

 not done me any harm by introducing disease as has been 

 alleged to have occurred in some places. 



No eggs are hatched in the incubator. We take eggs 

 from nests 'cut out' or from outsides, and put them 

 under hens ; when the eggs ' bill ' they are substituted 

 (19 to a nest) for the eggs on which a hen partridge 



