6 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



for, if the crop of a partridge be examined during 

 those seasons, it will be found to contain chiefly 

 grasses, grubs, and minute coleopterous insects, 

 which in the larva state are, in a greater or less 

 degree, injurious to vegetation. 



Where the country is open and magpies nu- 

 merous, the nest of the partridge is subject to 

 frequent depredations, especially during hot dry 

 summers, when the herbage is scanty, and the 

 eggs . therefore easily discovered. The peculiar 

 mode of roosting at night generally adopted by 

 the whole covey, who are squatted in a circle 

 in an open part of a stubble field, with their tails 

 in the centre, and their heads turned outwards, 

 although apparently well calculated to enable 

 them to perceive the approach of danger, yet 

 exposes them to certain deadly enemies, among 

 whom the night-prowling fox and the human 

 poacher stand pre-eminent. The former, from 

 his keen scent and stealthy mode of advance, 

 frequently succeeds in springing into the midst 

 of the family, and in sacrificing several of their 

 number especially in wet weather. To say 

 nothing of the various systems of wiring, snaring, 

 trapping, and shooting, usually employed by man, 

 there is one mode of netting although many 

 are practised that is not much known, and seems 

 to deserve especial notice from its destructive cha- 



