QUIET PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 



The wanderer in far-off countries often comes across 

 birds of the partridge kind, which, although en- 

 countered amid the roughs and tumbles of foreign 

 sport or exploration, bring back warm to his memory 

 the comely brown birds of old England, the yellow 

 stubble fields, cool areas of turnips and swedes, lush 

 green meadows, old-fashioned homesteads, and many 

 another September association dear to the Briton 

 abroad. And although the sport among big game, 

 whether in Africa, Asia, or America, may be keen and 

 exciting enough to satisfy the most insatiable hunter, 

 few men abroad can erase from the tablets of their 

 recollection those delightful autumn days passed amid 

 the fields and hedgerows of old England. 



Who can forget his first partridge ? I for my part 

 and I believe that my memory is very much the 

 memory of every gunner can call to mind the very 

 spot in the very field in which breathlessly I slew my 

 first bird. It is a good many years ago now, yet I 

 recall clearly each circumstance of that great event. 

 I remember well the ancient brown walls and deep 

 thatch of "the Old Barn" hard by, a Northampton- 

 shire barn, bearing on its warm sandstone gable-end 

 the date 1642. I remember crossing "the Old Barn 

 ground " and then entering a piece of fallow, where I 

 knew that some birds lay. And well I remember 

 walking that fallow with a beating heart. I was alone, 

 armed with an old single muzzle-loader. The whole 

 scene at this moment rises clear before me. Three 

 birds get up within easy shot ; I take aim at the nearest 

 and fire, and to my astonishment and delight down 

 drops to the red earth my first partridge. The in- 

 describable rapture of that moment can never fade. 

 And when, in the piece of clover to which the odd 

 brace have betaken themselves, I positively bring 



265 



