110 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



nails from the Saviour's hands when he hung upon the 

 cross, and its red feathers from the sacred blood. 



But hark! the dog has flushed a partridge! It goes 

 whirring off through the woods, with its uncanny facility 

 in dodging obstructions. There is little difficulty in 

 finding the spot whence it rose. On a southward- 

 sloping bank, in a shaft of sunlight, the snow has almost 

 melted away, and with a little scratching the bird has 

 uncovered some partridge-berries, or eyeberries as we 

 boys used to call the fruit of the Mitchella repens, that 

 dainty little evergreen trailer which bears its fragrant, 

 waxy flowers in June, and later its bright red berries, 

 on the forest floor of our American woods. How 

 glossy the leaves look now, and how brilliant the 

 berries, as they lie on the dark, exposed mould, amid 

 the snow and the scattered fragments of dead leaves 

 scratched away by the bird ! They are pleasant to the 

 human taste, also, though without the pungency of 

 checkerberries. 



The partridges are growing scarce in our Berkshire 

 thickets. Certain gamekeepers say it is because the 

 English pheasants have driven them to the mountain- 

 tops, but I have my doubts of this, though it is un- 

 doubtedly true that this grouse we never tame is now 

 found above the 1,500-foot level, while the pheasants re- 

 main at a lower altitude. We have thousands of pheas- 

 ants and as they were until recently protected the year 

 through, they are extremely fearless, walking up to our 



