THE PARTRIDGE. 79 



THEIR NUMBERS IN DIFFERENT LOCALITIES. 



After a favorable season, partridges are found in abundance 

 throughout the Southern, Middle, and Western States ; and, if the 

 reports of those who have gunned in the West can be relied on, 



their numbers in these latter territories must be enormous, quite 



beyond any idea we have of them in the Atlantic States. We 

 have never yet been so unfortunate as to meet with partridges, on 

 any of our shooting excursions, in such large bodies as necessarily 

 to destroy, by their superabundance, all zest for hunting them ; 

 and we are rejoiced that there is only a comfortable scarcity in 

 these localities, at all events a scarcity sufficient to make us all 

 work hard and exercise a becoming skill in both hunting and 

 shooting our game, which excitement, by-the-by, constitutes the 

 chief pleasure attending the sports of the dog and gun. 



The mere sallying out in a country overrun with birds, and 

 sauntering lazily about for a few hours, loading and firing with 

 little or no discrimination or exercise of skill in hunting up the 

 game, remind us very strongly of the battues in the overstocked 

 manors of the Old World, or perhaps the tameness of a pigeon- 

 shooting in our own country. 



DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BIRD. 



The American partridge differs from the English variety in 

 several particulars, although it greatly resembles it in habits and 

 disposition. It is smaller by one-third than the English; the 

 plumage is somewhat different, and the call entirely dissimilar ; its 

 flesh, however, is equally white and delicate. 



We received a couple of brace of English partridges, a few days 

 since, from a friend residing in the mother-country ; they arrived in 

 good condition, and, we should think, were remarkably fine speci- 

 mens, as they weighed 1 Ib. 13 oz. each brace. The wings struck us as 

 being singularly small and short for the size of the body. We invited 

 some of our sporting friends to be participators in this rather 

 novel and rare feast ; and we believe that they were unanimous in 



