122 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



RETENTIVE LIFE. 



Sensitive as birds' eggs are to chills, one very 

 often despairs too soon of a temporarily abandoned 

 " sitting," for the eggs may retain their life long after 

 they have become stone-cold to the touch. Towards 

 the end of May, a lad going home about eight in the 

 evening found that a partridge had been killed on her 

 nest and carried off by a cat, and next morning the 

 keeper found the motherless eggs quite cold. He 

 gathered them up, and, though he did not get home 

 from his round until eight, put them under a bantam 

 hen. He would not, perhaps, have thought it worth 

 while had he known then what the boy came to tell 

 him during the day about the killing of the partridge 

 before eight on the previous evening ; yet in due time 

 nearly all of the eggs were hatched, and the keeper 

 has the satisfaction of seeing the young birds getting 

 strong on the wing in a field of barley a mile away. 



THE KEEPER'S CARE. 



For the keeper acts as a sort of deputy for Nature 

 towards the partridges. In a nettle-patch by the 

 high-road a partridge had made her nest ; and since 

 it is a common trick of rustic poachers to part all 

 clumps of herbage by the road with a stick to see 

 if a bird chances to be sitting within, the keeper 

 supplied this bird with bad eggs, which he had col- 

 lected on his rounds, to sit upon, and distributed her 

 good eggs among other nests in safer positions. But 

 it so happened that this partridge among the road- 

 side nettles escaped detection by egg-stealers ; and, 



