152 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



eggs next spring, hatch them out, and rear them with ban- 

 tams, taking care to keep the broods well apart as they grow 

 up, to prevent them from packing, for if they do so they 

 often, when disturbed, take uncommon long nights, and on 

 that account they may leave his grounds altogether. Where 

 cultivation at a considerable altitude in former times has 

 been going on, but where there are now only a few green 

 patches of grass land, the rest all heather and bracken a 

 few broods of partridges are often still to be found. They 

 are usually smaller in size than their more favoured brethren 

 in the low grounds, and their plumage is considerably darker; 

 their flesh is as high-flavoured almost as grouse to the palate, 

 no doubt from the food they subsist upon. I have shot them 

 in winter with their crops full of heather. 



I do not believe, with Mr. Greener, that there is more 

 than one species of English partridge in England ; with a 

 bird varying so much in location and food, great varieties 

 of plumage and build may be expected. The French species, 

 one of our most beautifully plumaged birds, and weighing 

 sometimes as much as 1 Ib. 6 oz., here and there proves an 

 enemy to the home birds, much to the resentment of shooting 

 lessees and the spoiling of dogs, as the bird is an obdurate 

 runner, and will, unless headed, slip from field to field with- 

 out rising to " tempt the hazard of the die." 



The naturalist sympathizes, and sees no more reason why 

 a "red leg" should not run under such circumstances than 

 an Irish landlord in like case ; but then the friendship of the 

 naturalist is indiscriminate, and as he cannot explain the 

 diffusion of species he would like to see them still more 

 diffused. Thus he is much in favour of that pleasant sub- 

 ject, acclimatization, which, however, is too wide and curious 

 to be seriously entered upon here. A few erratic attempts, 

 it is true, to enrich our home fauna with game birds likely 

 to vary our shootings without enlisting the hostility of 

 farmers have been made, but not, we think, with much 

 judgment. Examples of what might be done are obvious, 



