PARTRIDGE SHOOTING. 209 



instituting the system of driving. The guns are posted behind a 

 suitable and stationary shelter, and the birds are driven over. The 

 old birds, the wild ones and the red-legs, are the first to come over 

 the posted shooters, and are the first victims. Driving gives worse 

 sport than the old way, but it takes better shooting, for the birds 

 come very fast overhead, and come by at every imaginable angle. 

 Then again in driving all the generalship is displayed by the 

 keeper with his army of beaters. The " gun " now need know 

 nothing of the haunts and ways of birds. He is no longer a sports- 

 man with all about him that the word sportsman conveys ; for 

 the time being he has degenerated to a mere shooting-machine ; 

 all he needs is a quick eye and straight powder. 



The driving of partridges is mainly the sport of the rich man, 

 armed with expensive shooting-irons, and waited on by a host of 

 beaters, but partridges afford a vast deal of sport other than 

 driving to poorer men of the unleisured classes. 



The partridge is par excellence the game bird of England. 

 Every man, almost every boy in the English counties who 

 handles a gun at all, may hope to bring down his few brace 

 in the autumn season. All through the spring and summer the 

 " birds " and their breeding have formed the subject of rustic talk. 

 " Wine talk is very pretty talk," said Thackeray, leniently, of the 

 eternal " shop " indulged in by post-prandial man upon this im- 

 portant and little understood topic, but partridge talk, in summer 

 time while the crops are growing thick, is far prettier talk. No 

 one quite knows how many brace of old birds have been left from 

 the year before, how many birds have paired, how the eggs have 

 hatched out and even where all goes well, and stoat and carrion 

 crow and sparrow-hawk and polecat have spared the newly hatched 



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