THE PARTRIDGE 197 



to take place. It is illegal to set traps in the open, and 

 the law should be firmly set in force without any fear 

 of incurring the displeasure of the farmer. He is in the 

 wrong, and to overlook this is buying his goodwill at too 

 high a price. The more you give in, the more a farmer 

 will take advantage of you, but if he is a decent man 

 at all, and you have his goodwill, he will at once, on his 

 attention being drawn to the matter, stop the practice. 

 If he does not, such goodwill as he has to give is not 

 worth having, and you had better have all the rabbits 

 killed down in winter. In this instance it is not the 

 pheasant that serves as the unwilling cause of offence, 

 but the grouse. As in the case of large covert shoots 

 in the south, so in the case of moors in the north, the 

 keeper has been (metaphorically speaking) in the past, 

 and seems likely to be in the future, a snob. The 

 pheasant and the grouse he regards as high in the 

 social world of the bird, and worthy of pampering and 

 adulation, whilst the poor vagabond partridge is left 

 more or less to grub for himself. 



The blame for this condition of affairs, of course, 

 reflects to a marked degree on the owners or tenants 

 themselves, but does not entirely release the keepers 

 from their responsibilities. Many sportsmen only stay 

 at their shooting boxes as long as they are able to get 

 sport on the moors, and return south practically in- 

 different to the fact of the possibilities of good bags of 

 partridges from the cultivated land that stretches down 

 the strath in front of their very lodge doors. And even 



