242 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



coveys of game, as I have many times proved in different parts of 

 the country. 



During the breeding season, the Partridge often courts safety and 

 shelter in places where one little expects to find a bird of such 

 wary habits. I have frequently found the nest at the roots of 

 hedges, and even by the side of walls among rank grass, where the 

 sitting birds managed to get safely off with their brood. I have 

 rarely found more than sixteen eggs in a nest, and frequently I have 

 seen fewer than that number. Mr Alston tells me that he knew 

 of a pair of partridges that succeeded in rearing a brood of twenty 

 young ones in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire. When the young 

 leave the nest, which, according to Dr Fleming, they do in twelve 

 hours, they are led by the old birds to the nearest ant-hills, " the 

 eggs in which," says that writer, " constitute their early nourish- 

 ment." At a later stage they find their way into turnip fields, where 

 they may be seen picking the aphides from the under side of the 

 leaves a good service to the farmer. The Earl of Haddington 

 has informed me that in hard weather they attack the bulb of the 

 turnip, and do great injury; and that, in many cases, the wood 

 pigeon is blamed for much mischief of this kind, which may be 

 traced to the Partridge. 



Several curious varieties of the Partridge have come under my 

 notice ; one, a pure albino, now in the collection of Mr Stewart of 

 Tonderghie, in Wigtownshire, was shot by that gentleman on his 

 property some years ago. I have also seen pale buff-coloured 

 specimens killed in the counties of Moray and Inverness. 

 In the autumn of 1868, I saw in the hands of a Dundee bird- 

 stuffer a pair of partridges that had been shot on the higher 

 grounds of Forfarshire a short time previously. They were strik- 

 ingly handsome birds, and agreed precisely with the partridge 

 figured by Sir William Jardine as perdix cinerea var montana, in his 

 volume on game birds (Nat. Lib. Orn., vol. iv., pi. 2. Edinburgh, 

 1834). The keeper who shot them seemed to distinguish them as 

 hill partridges, and I was then informed that small numbers were 

 occasionally seen, in the lower grounds, mixing with coveys of the 

 common species. 



The following suggestive paragraph is taken from Thompson's 

 1 Birds of Ireland': "There is a singular difference in habit be- 

 tween the partridge of the north of Ireland and that of the oppo- 

 site portion of Scotland, as is well known to sportsmen who have 



