Partridges Protection. 95 



preserve them, but partridges require far different conditions 

 for existence, which are alone found in the cultivated fields 

 of the farmer, whose ideas of what is right and just very 

 often differ from those of the landlord, or the proprietor of 

 the shooting. The result of this divergence of opinion 

 respecting game - preserving may prove most unpleasant. 

 We have seen it in the case of the Ground Game Act, 

 which has injured those for whose benefit it was enacted far 

 more than those at whose heads it was levelled, and for 

 aught we know, we may see it again in the case of partridges, 

 and it is in no captious spirit that we warn preservers how 

 they go to work with that class of farmers who can only see 

 with one eye, and that but a poor sort of optic. Of course, 

 there are more farmers who support game preserving than find 

 it a grievance, and who are first to look after the partridges' 

 weal, but politics nowadays have arrived at such a pass, 

 that there are men who imagine that by placing their foot 

 on a nestful of olive-brown eggs, they strike a blow in the 

 cause of tenant-right. It is against this sort of thing that 

 game preservers have to combat, besides the poacher and 

 the varmints, and what \ve counsel is, tact in dealing with 

 such men. If the man who owns or rents a shooting over 

 the land of farmers who take the unkind view of things 

 attempts to deal in any harsh or over-bearing manner with 

 this kind of poaching, for such it is, he will have poor sport 

 for his pains, and do more to aggravate that distrust 

 between class and class which has sprung up of late years 

 and which it is our imperative duty to try to do away 

 with. 



We have spoken on this matter now, because it is in the 



