FOOD OF THE PARTRIDGES. 69 



FOOD OF THE PAETEIDGES. 



IJAETEIDGES are chiefly granivorous, but they also 

 feed on berries, buds, and insects. Their principal 

 food in autumn and winter is wheat, corn, buck- 

 wheat, berries, and seed. Their favorite food is corn 

 and buckwheat. They prefer it to any other kinds of grain, 

 but during the shooting season they are more frequently 

 found in swamps, thickets, clearings, and in second growth 

 wood skirts, briar patches bordering wheat stubble and 

 corn fields, and in wheat stubble, more than they are in 

 corn and buckwheat fields. This is owing in a great mea- 

 sure to the want of sufficient cover, more than to the pref- 

 erence for the food found there. They feed on different 

 species of berries, gum, sassafras, poke, wild cherries and 

 the like, and are very fond of black haws, and wild chicken 

 grapes, and eat ants, grasshoppers, and other insects. In 

 extreme winter and in spring, when the ground is cover- 

 ed with snow, and food is scarce, when driven by neces- 

 sity more than love, they feed on different species of seed, 

 plants, and buds, such as rag-weed seed, and then they are 

 said to partake of the tender buds and leaves of the marsh 

 laurel (Kalmia Glauca), which may be found in the low- 

 lands, and the mountain laurel (Kalmia Latifolia), which 

 shades and crowns, and in summer adorns with its beauti- 

 ful flowers our unshorn primitive, wooded hills, and moun- 

 tain sides, and possesses like properties as the other species. 

 This well known evergeen inhabits all sections of the Uni- 

 ted States. It is from three to ten feet in height the 

 leaves are possessed of poisonous narcotic properties. They 

 are said to prove fatal to sheep and some other animals, 

 but are eaten with impunity by deer, goats, and partridges. 

 It is said that death has been occasioned by eating the 



