PARTRIDGE SHOOTING. 163 



Herbert, it will be long before even the question 

 of its true ornithological title is settled. "The 

 difficulty," says that gentleman, "lies not so 

 much in the delicacy of the subject itself, as in 

 the utter want of sporting authority in America 

 competent to pronounce a decree." With due 

 deference to Mr. Herbert, we would remark that 

 it is not at all likely that he, himself, will be 

 soon called to the task, since with all his research 

 and experience in the field, he has already made 

 a curious blunder of pronouncing the American 

 partridge, a quail, to which it really bears little 

 analogy, as our townsman, Dr. E. J. Lewis, of 

 Philadelphia, in his Hints to Sportsmen, page 

 forty-seven, has conclusively shown. This error 

 is more remarkable, inasmuch as however fan- 

 ciful Forrester may be in his description of the 

 modus operandi of killing a brace of wild ducks, 

 right and left, from behind a pair of fast trotting 

 nags going at speed, he is generally correct in 

 his appreciation of the habits of the bird which 

 he professes to portray. One of the mooted 

 points in the history of the partridge, is the 

 number of broods which each pair of old birds 

 produce in a season ; another relates to what 

 has been rather unadvisably called the mys- 

 terious faculty of withholding its scent, when 



