THE DAB-CHICK 277 



will carry off her eggs to the incubator, or his 

 brood hens. One pheasant, when she had risen 

 some fifteen feet into the air, dropped an egg, 

 whether it was that, in her hurry, she had caught 

 it up in her claws or feathers, or whether we 

 had intruded upon her in the very act of laying. 

 We all saw the egg fall ; but we searched for it in 

 vain, for it had buried itself deep in the muddy 

 ooze. In more than one instance, a pheasant is 

 sitting on the bare ground, with hardly a spray 

 of withered bracken to cover her ; but so like is 

 her sombre plumage to that of the soil on 

 which she sits, that we might have crushed her 

 and her rising hopes together, had not the keeper, 

 with his sharper eyes, called us aside just in time. 

 Up springs a partridge from her nest, with that 

 tremendous whirring of wings, out of all proportion 

 to her size, which, by the start it gives you, so 

 often makes you miss an otherwise easy shot. A 

 little further on, the keeper steps aside to see how 

 another partridge's nest, which he has long watched, 

 is getting on. The eggs, alas, are sucked, or 

 scattered in every direction round the nest. He 

 gazes ruefully at the ruin. "What has done it?" 

 I ask. "It is a hedgehog, the most mischieffull 

 vermin that there is ; he never touches a nest till 



