26 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



many birds to so many acres was what I could not 

 feel sure of. 



Already I had had plenty of experience of 

 labourers and others who, after seeing two or three 

 decent coveys (possibly the same covey over again), 

 not only think, but make publicly known, that a 

 place is swarming with birds, or, as one old fellow 

 put it, 'there's 'osales o' birds/ I swallowed it all 

 with a good deal of salt, knowing that the test of 

 the partridge pudding comes in September. I 

 never knew a good keeper who was given to ex- 

 aggerating his partridge prospects ; in other words, 

 a man given to that form of exaggeration is seldom 

 a good keeper. 



Twenty brace of partridges to a party of four or 

 five guns was quite a bumper bag in the days and 

 locality of which I am writing. However, when 

 the prospects for my first day came to be discussed 

 at headquarters, I felt confident enough to suggest 

 a possibility of twenty brace, if the day were fine 

 and the guns passable. Often I have thought since 

 how fortunate it is that few are the days of Septem- 

 ber with fine weather, plenty of good cover, lazy 

 partridges, and skilled, active guns, armed, as is 

 now the fashion, with a pair of ejectors. Partridges 

 could not stand much of that. It readily will be 

 imagined into what a state of suppressed excitement 

 I got as the First drew near, with its prospect of 

 active service and of the harvest of those long 



