ON A PARTRIDGE BEAT 23 



me, presumably, two lots of about eight partridge 

 e gg s - Of course, they would swear each lot of eggs 

 came from a separate nest. It was impossible to 

 prove otherwise, and it would have been bad policy 

 to have hinted too broadly at trickery, however 

 strongly one might suspect it. All partridge eggs 

 are very much the same to the ordinary eye, but 

 one generally can detect a similarity of shape among 

 the eggs laid by individual birds. If the number of 

 small clutches brought in seemed to me to be un- 

 reasonable, and especially if the eggs in alleged 

 separate nests bore a family resemblance, I would 

 say that funds would not run to the customary 

 shilling reward, except for respectable clutches. I 

 had to listen to a good deal of gratuitous advice 

 more from a sense of politeness and diplomacy than 

 because of its usefulness. One special hint, given 

 just as the partridges were beginning to lay, was to 

 the effect that all the keepers with whom my in- 

 formant had had any ' concerns ' lost no time in 

 pressing at least a shilling into the hand of the 

 finder so soon as a nest was found. My rule 

 continued to be to pay a shilling for each nest of 

 eggs, when safely hatched, if found in a reasonably 

 legitimate way. It was only in very exceptional 

 cases that I departed from this rule. 



Another plan to encourage the care of game was 

 to give threepence for the right ear-tip of leverets. 

 One man produced four ear-tips, and I gave him 



