TRESPASSERS AND POACHERS 237 



to his sister (evidently to take home), and proceeded 

 to suck the partridge egg, when I made known my 

 presence. Although that boy denied all that I had 

 been watching from a distance of a few feet, even 

 to putting his hand behind his back and dropping 

 the egg which he had tapped ready to suck, I think 

 I prevented him from growing up a regular egg 

 thief. On another occasion I traced to a woman 

 the disappearance of eleven partridge eggs, which, 

 by the way, had been sat upon about ten days. 

 The woman confessed that she had eaten them all, 

 pleading that she 'fancied summat ta-asty.' And I 

 should imagine that her desire was gratified by 

 eggs that had been sat upon for ten days. The 

 wilful destruction of eggs is a difficult matter to deal 

 with ; it is so easy to destroy eggs without causing 

 evidence strong enough to prove that they were 

 destroyed wilfully. Of course, it is different when 

 the offender is caught in the act of killing a sitting 

 bird with a stick or a catapult. A woodman, who 

 thought there were no foxes about, told me that he 

 felt sure a partridge had been knocked off her nest, 

 because, he said, there were a lot of feathers about, 

 and a lump of coal was lying near. Neither of us 

 could imagine who had done this thing. The lump 

 of coal pointed to someone living in a cluster of 

 cottages, the only ones within half a mile. I proved 

 to the woodman that no one had knocked the bird 

 off with the lump of coal, for the herbage beneath it 



