AMERICAN PARTRIDGE. 29 



estimated, is that it never gets so wild as to rise so 

 far from your dogs as to be out of gun-shot, a nui- 

 sance that all are so well aware of in our home-bred 

 bird toward the end of the season. In fact, who 

 that shoots regularly can not remember instances of 

 our partridge disappearing over the far side of a 

 field as soon as the sportsman had entered it ? Now, 

 in years of experience in America, I never saw an 

 instance of this kind ; up to the commencement of 

 the close season they would remain almost as tame 

 as they were at the termination of the previous one. 

 A reason for this may be that they seldom pack ; 

 only once or twice have I seen more than the usual 

 number of a covey together, and then remarked that 

 the weather had been unusually severe and stormy. 



A peculiarity, however, this bird possesses is that 

 in wet and slushy weather he will frequently, when 

 disturbed, take shelter on the limbs of trees, from 

 where, if flushed, they afford the hardest possible 

 shots. This bird in the open is by no means easy to 

 hit, for his flight is very strong and swift, and fre- 

 quently irregular, but he does not go far, so that a 

 good marker seldom has much trouble to refind him. 

 Some persons are^ under the impression that this 

 partridge is migratory ; however, this is a mistake, 



