200 THE KEEPER'S BOOK 



desire for specific information is dismissed by a few in- 

 consequent and often misleading general statements. 

 And it is curious to observe how glibly the indifferent 

 keeper will, season after season, talk of the drowning 

 of the young birds and of the smallness of the coveys, 

 apparently indifferent to the fact of the ways and means 

 to counteract these conditions. In the case of High- 

 land shootings, the keeper, perhaps, is not so much to 

 blame as the men whose care is chiefly with a semi-wild 

 bird of the hand-reared pheasant type. The imagina- 

 tion of the former may be stunted by the fact that his 

 work is chiefly with birds which, to a marked extent, look 

 after themselves, and which receive but slight artificial 

 assistance compared with the hand-reared pheasant. 

 But although this be a fact, it ought not to serve as an 

 excuse, and it will be the first duty of the sportsman 

 who realises the possibilities that he may have missed, 

 to remind the keeper of the artificial processes that are 

 necessary for the proper rearing and care of a good 

 partridge stock. 



Having said so much in regard to the partridge 

 ground attached to shootings where the moor is the 

 first consideration, we return to the conditions to which 

 Mr. Stuart Wortley has specially directed his remarks. 

 " Most English manors," says this great authority, ''have 

 not anything like the stock of partridges which they 

 ought to produce. This I attribute to three causes. 

 First, the keeper's work is not, as far as partridges are 

 concerned, well understood or properly carried out. 



