194 THE LITTLE BROWN BIRD 



1907 would soon make the description inapplicable, 

 in the United Kingdom at least, so relentlessly did 

 cold and wet massacre both first and second broods in 

 that season. 



Although the partridge is familiarly known to every 

 country dweller, yet comparatively few persons are 

 able to distinguish between the cock and hen birds, 

 so close is the general resemblance between the sexes 

 in size and plumage. To tell them apart on the wing 

 is impossible; but there are certain well-defined, 

 though minute differences which may easily be dis- 

 cerned when the bird is in hand. The usual test is to 

 examine the breast; if it displays the characteristic 

 horse-shoe arrangement of rich chestnut feathers the 

 bird is confidently pronounced to be a cock, although 

 it requires but a slight acquaintance with anatomy 

 to prove with a penknife that nearly all hen-birds of 

 the first year carry a horseshoe as clearly defined as 

 that of the cocks. You must exercise discretion in 

 propounding this doctrine (which has received the 

 sanction of almost every text-book on ornithology) in 

 the presence of a gamekeeper, for belief in the horse- 

 shoe as the exclusive badge of the male partridge is 

 wellnigh ineradicable among those who have most to 

 do with the bird. 



It was Mr. Ogilvie Grant of the British Museum 

 who, for the first time, I think, formulated the true 

 external marks of distinction between the sexes, and 

 explained them in the Field newspaper (November 21, 

 1891, and April 9, 1892). It is rather difficult to con- 

 vey the information without a diagram : but I will try. 



