PARTRIDGE GALL. 171 



vigilance a couple of poachers will, with the 

 assistance of a long net, often kill his mate and 

 all their offspring. The net is dragged along 

 the ground with the top well forward, and 

 directly a covey attempts to rise it is dropped 

 over them and they are doomed. To prevent 

 this kind of destruction gamekeepers u bush " 

 the fields in August, and thus save their game. 



PARTRIDGE. 



(Photographed on the Westmorland Hills after a Storm.) 



Partridges are, like Grouse, amenable to an arti- 

 ficially-produced call if their peculiar skirling cry 

 be successfully imitated. A Surrey farmer once told 

 me that he had in years gone by lain in the corner 

 of a field and lured lots of birds within shot by 

 means of a call made and used in the following 

 way : He took an ordinary sewing - thimble, and 

 grinding the end away, tied a piece of parchment 

 over the hole so tightly as to render it resonant, 

 and making a pin-hole through the centre, threaded 

 it on to a piece of catgut or horsehair. By holding 



