96 Practical Game Preserving. 



preserving of partridges that it comes most to the fore, and 

 because good sport in the month of September can only 

 be expected when good feeling prevails between the culti- 

 vator of the soil and the preserver of the game. 



The partridge suffers more from attacks by vermin than 

 any other of our game birds. It is the least difficult for 

 winged and furred marauders to obtain, and it possesses 

 less means of defending itself against their rapacity. From 

 the eggs to the full grown bird, every varmint that runs or 

 flies is on the look out for them. The polecat kills the hen 

 bird on her nest, and the broods of young, the stoat carries 

 on the same practice, while both of these varmints may kill 

 a covey in the night ; weasels are for ever on the look out 

 for the eggs, and cats have a nasty knack of killing the 

 females whilst sitting. Foxes, also, know all about it. 



Of the feathered marauders we need say little, but it is 

 to the point. They are all equally bad hawks, crows, 

 magpies, and jays. Even the common snake cannot 

 resist them ; well behaved as this lengthy gentleman 

 generally is, partridges prove too strong an allurement for 

 him and he falls away from the path of virtue. The cure 

 for all this we know; " to kill vermin is to preserve game," 

 and if we want partridges we cannot have stoats, weasels, 

 hawks, and jays et hoc genus omne. 



The next cause of diminution in partridges is poaching ; 

 but, as the preserving of the perdix differs from that of the 

 pheasant, so the style of poaching them differs. Poachers 

 rarely shoot partridges except they belong to that class of 

 men who poach for pleasure and sport alone ; they are of 

 the same nature as the men who travel on the railway with- 



