Partridges Natural History. 75 



when bustled about, provided always that the bustling be 

 not overdone. 



It is no difficult task to specify the localities suitable to 

 partridge preserving; it would be far less easy to name 

 any portion of our country where one might not find it 

 possible to raise a covey of birds. If it be given a fair 

 chance and afforded some inducement to establish itself, 

 the partridge is quite capable of doing so. It needs little 

 help, and is far less dependent on the protection of man 

 than the pheasant or the grouse. Any locality where there 

 is a fair sprinkling of arable land, and where the ground 

 is not, although wholly pasture, of a partially uneven and 

 broken character, will serve a low bit of brake here, and 

 a few rods of common there, alternating with close cropped 

 hedges to form the divisions. But where it is painfully 

 evident that the land is used for grazing purposes only, by 

 its stiff walled hedgerows and monotony of meadows, then 

 the partridge coveys will be few and very far between. Upon 

 the high bleak moors, too, it finds a habitat agreeable to its 

 taste, and in Wales, Scotland, and even the wild islands on 

 its northernmost coast. On the dreary, inhospitable waste of 

 Dartmoor we have found them, thriving, yet solitary, far from 

 the cultivated fields on its outskirts. Thus, it lends itself 

 under all favourable conditions to the desires of the game 

 preserver, and very little expense or trouble is needed upon 

 his part to ensure a copious supply of these much esteemed 

 game birds. 



The habits of the partridge are very interesting. In the 

 early spring it frequents the fallows and the pasture fields, 

 rarely quitting them, except for the low copse or spinney 



