262 PARTRIDGES 



altered in sequence to suit the changed 

 order of the day. Besides this, you must 

 always be prepared to depart from your 

 carefully elaborated schemes if the birds 

 do not fall in with them ; it is like war 

 on a small scale, the enemy's army is 

 your true objective, and his cities and 

 strongholds, represented in this case by 

 fields of turnip, mustard, or rape, lose all 

 true value and remain only a snare and a 

 delusion when the birds have betaken 

 themselves elsewhere. This seemingly 

 trivial point demands and deserves close 

 consideration, for it is not an easy move 

 in the game to depart boldly from the 

 ordered sequence of events, and turn 

 aside after a big lot of birds that have 

 gone the wrong way. Not easy, but 

 almost always worth while, unless you 

 have great numbers of birds all over the 

 ground ; for the coveys have probably 

 been broken up by going once over the 

 guns, and scattered birds are what make 

 a killing drive. The difficulty of this, as 

 of every other manoeuvre in driving, is 



