COMMON PARTRIDGE. 51 



so far renders the labour of the bird less necessary than the 

 supply which its powers of increase can afford ; and there- 

 fore, if the surplus is useful to us, we may freely take and 

 use it. When the birds of the season have come to maturity, 

 they are far more than the winter could support. Many 

 would, in consequence, die of starvation ; therefore while they 

 are in season, go by all means to the field, inhale the bracing 

 air of autumn, to fortify yourself against the cold of winter, 

 and fire away. That is your direct use in the partridge ; 

 and though not half so important as the indirect one which 

 you do not see, still it is a delicious use ; so take it, and 

 enjoy it freely. But be a wise sportsman, and do not exter- 

 minate : the farmer who eats the seed corn gets no more 

 crops. Be an honest sportsman, and "bide your time." 

 From the time that the coveys pack, and you can with diffi- 

 culty get within shot of them, to that when the next brood 

 are on the wing, the birds are doing you nothing but good, 

 and you can do them nothing but harm. Man may not 

 observe you, and you may evade the punishment of those 

 laws which, whether wisely or not, he has enacted ; but do 

 not on that account both injure and degrade yourself. Take 

 your use with knowledge, but be not an ignorant or a wanton 

 plunderer of that store over which, for the greatest good of 

 all, the eye of Omniscience keeps watch. 



Children, unless they have been schooled in the vice of 

 mere hoarding, always break or pull to pieces those toys of 

 which they know not the use ; but they are just as happy, 

 nay, far happier, in preserving those of which the use is 

 known : and we may all derive an important lesson from 

 that. We are, among the works of nature, what children are 

 in the toy-shop, only the things of which we know not the 

 use are more numerous in proportion. While ignorant, we 

 most destroy ; and we can destroy nothing that is natural 

 without injury to ourselves; so that to use we must first 



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