PARTRIDGES. 107 



walked round the tree, and round again, then ob- 

 served the dog, whose eyes were, evidently, directly 

 fixed upon the object itself, and still was I disap- 

 pointed in perceiving nothing. In the mean time, 

 the dog, working himself up to a pitch of impa- 

 tience and violence, tore with his paws the trunk of 

 the tree, and bit the rotten sticks and bark, jumping 

 and springing up at intervals towards the game ; 

 and five minutes had at least elapsed in this manner, 

 when all at once I saw the eye of the bird. There 

 it sat, or rather stood, just where Rover pointed, in 

 an attitude so perfectly still and fixed, with an out- 

 stretched neck, and a body drawn out to such an 

 unnatural length, that twenty times must I have 

 overlooked it, mistaking it for a dead branch, which 

 it most closely resembled. It was about twenty 

 feet from the ground, on a bough, and sat eight or 

 ten feet from the body of the tree. I shot it, and 

 in the course of the morning killed four more, which 

 I came upon much in the same way as I did upon 

 the first. At one of these my gun flashed three 

 times without its attempting to move; after which 

 I drew the charge, loaded again, and killed it. The 

 dog all the time was barking and baying with the 

 greatest perseverance. There is, in fact, no limit to 

 the stupidity of these creatures; and it is by no 

 means unusual, on finding a whole covey on a tree 

 in the Autumn, to begin by shooting the bird which 

 happens to sit lowest, and then to drop the one 

 above him, and so on till all are killed.*" 



Very different, indeed, from our straggling covies, 

 are the assemblages of these birds in America. 

 * Captain Hoau's Forest Scemrj. 



