252 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



have been sitting but ten days instead of the usual twenty-four. 

 On various occasions this plan has been described as if it were 

 new, and an emergency plan, at Stetchworth in 1905 ; but that 

 is by no means the case, as it is the plan by which the most 

 hostile forces of nature in the shape of bad seasons have been 

 rendered comparatively harmless. Any plan that permits 

 bags of about 500 birds and upwards per day to be made for 

 many days, and in spite of such seasons as the last five, three 

 of which were wet and the fourth and fifth bad with thunder- 

 storms, must be wonderful. 



Not content with the short incubation system, Lord 

 Ellesmere has tried every other at Stetchworth. Hungarian 

 partridges in small quantities have been attempted, and also 

 the French system of preservation by pairing birds in pens. 

 When the author last heard about the latter system, the results 

 were not to be compared for a moment with those of the real 

 wild birds assisted by the short incubation plan. 



Another place where all the systems have been tried (except 

 the French, as far as is known to the writer) is Rushmore, in 

 Wilts, where Mr. Glen Kidston has achieved a revolution in 

 partridge preservation and vermin killing. He is a believer 

 in making it the keeper's business to keep down rats, and as a 

 matter of fact that is another lesson that Norfolk and Suffolk 

 might learn from less naturally favoured counties. Where this 

 business is left to the farmers it is not properly done. As the 

 keepers have killed nearly 5000 rats in a season at Rushmore, it 

 goes without saying how the partridges' eggs would have fared 

 had these horrible creatures been left to raid upon them. Un- 

 questionably the greatest service that keepers can ever do to 

 farmers is to keep down rats. Hand rearing and Hungarian 

 eggs have been largely employed at Rushmore, where there 

 are plenty of ants' eggs for all comers, and plenty of space in 

 which to distribute the partridge coops in turnip-fields, and it 

 is said not close enough together to make " packing " a thing 

 to be feared. 



The principle that numbers bring disease is not feared at 

 Rushmore, for although as many as 1200 hand-reared birds 



