METHODS OF PRESERVATION OF PARTRIDGES 255 



four days was made. Then Lord Leicester and Lord Coke 

 appear to select guns for their deadliness, whereas Lord 

 Ellesmere generally has a family party. Besides this, probably 

 few people would consider the soil of The Six Mile Bottom 

 district, which is the adjoining shooting to Lord Ellesmere's 

 Stetchworth property, to be equal to that of Norfolk and Suffolk 

 as natural game country. At any rate, even in the 1905 dry 

 year, a great many partridges were driven off their nests by 

 a three days' rain and deserted, some of them entirely, others 

 only for a few days. Here the system was equal to the occasion, 

 for those that came back to the clear pheasants' eggs were given 

 chipped partridges' eggs to go off with, and those that did not 

 had only deserted bad pheasants' eggs in some cases, and when 

 it was otherwise the keepers were there to save the situation, 

 for the nests and their low situations were indicated on the 

 map. 



It has been shown above that even hand rearing cannot 

 be relied upon, as m Oxfordshire, to save the situation in spite 

 of adverse elements ; but the latest phase of partridge pre- 

 serving is a combination of three methods namely, 1st, the 

 introduction of Hungarians ; 2nd, the French system ; and 

 3rd, artificial incubation. It has often been affirmed that the 

 French system has failed badly in this country, but probably 

 that is entirely due to want of carefulness in matters of the 

 smallest detail. At any rate, Sir William Gordon Gumming 

 makes each penned pair of Hungarians produce an average 

 of 19 young. This is so remarkable and so satisfactory 

 that it must be related in detail. In the first place, the 

 matrimonial relations are never forced, but those birds that 

 have refused to mate in the big pens where they have been 

 since November are turned loose. The affections of the 

 others having been under observation, each pair is removed 

 to a circular pen of 27 feet diameter. It has been observed 

 that when a hen bird dies the cock will generally take on 

 her duties. The success obtained by this method of only 

 three years' standing is already quite wonderful, and the 

 season of 1905 resulted in doubling the bags, and also in a 



