HARVEST OF WILD PLACES 111 



very dooryards after grain. But there is a fatal open 

 season on partridges, and where they are hunted they are 

 shy and scarce. Ascend the Crawford Bridle Path up 

 Mount Washington, however, where they are ap- 

 parently not molested, and before you break out of the 

 woods on Clinton you will often come upon whole coveys 

 of them beside the path, so tame that they will almost 

 let you touch them with your hand, as they will in the 

 Canadian wilds. I have stood in the path and watched 

 a male bird, with three or four females about him, 

 scratching in the moss not six feet from me, and have 

 talked aloud with my companion while the partridges 

 continued feeding, quite indifferent to us, and keeping 

 up a soft, hen-like coot, coot of their own, a lovely little 

 woodland sound. 



The fact that the English pheasants are not neces- 

 sarily inimical to partridges, at any rate, is attested by 

 the experience of a breeder in Lenox, who found both 

 birds nesting on terms of perfect peace in the thickets of 

 his carefully posted and patrolled estate. He has 

 several times tried to breed the grouse in captivity, but 

 with little success, owing to the strange fact that the 

 cock invariably attempted to kill the female after 

 union, and on seven occasions succeeded before the 

 keeper could rescue her. But in a wild state, this 

 breeder believes, the partridges could hold their own 

 with the pheasants if given the same protection. What 

 a pity the chance, at least, is not afforded them! No 



