102 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



COVEYS CUT TO PIECES. 



We have a foretaste of harvest and autumn, too, 

 in the corn standing up in the ear and the hayfields 

 everywhere mown. Here, much too often, we come 

 across the wreck of some autumn's hopes in a covey 

 of tiny partridges scattered in the cutter's tracks 

 some shorn in half, others beheaded, others with legs 

 cut off, and two or three, perhaps, outwardly unin- 

 jured but fatally crushed. In the old days the sweep 

 of the scythe would shear some of the chicks asunder, 

 and leave the rest unharmed ; but the modern mecha- 

 nism of long blades, with double rows of iron sharks' - 

 teeth, which work upon each other like scissors, leave 

 little that lives upon the surface of the ground over 

 which they are swept by horse-power. You may 

 tenderly gather up the least mutilated of the tiny 

 creatures, and carry them away in the hope of nurs- 

 ing them back to health ; but before you reach home 

 they will be gasping out their bruised lives. The 

 rustics who drive the machines are by no means 

 callous to the fate of the little birds, for always, when 

 a scared partridge rises with a whirr in front of the 

 horses you will see the man pull up, and, leaping 

 down, search among the standing hay for the nest or 

 young ones. If eggs are found the machine is taken 

 carefully round them and the gamekeeper duly notified ; 

 but the partridge chicks hide so closely that to hunt 

 for them in a two-foot tangle of grass and clover is 

 almost hopeless. So the driver mounts again, and 

 the machine goes on. Perhaps by good luck it misses 

 the brood, and the mother, returning when it has 

 passed, can remove them to safety before it has again 



