FAVOURED PHEASANTS 139 



must suffer. For ten days after hatching, partridges 

 are at the mercy of the weather. Let one of those 

 marble-sized drops of rain strike a newly hatched 

 chick, and its day is done. As one sharp frost destroys 

 all the apple-crop of a countryside, if it comes when 

 the trees are in full bloom, so a deluge in mid- June is 

 fatal to all young partridges. Even a day's thunder- 

 rain, between the fifteenth and thirtieth of June, 

 would almost excuse a partridge keeper if he com- 

 mitted suicide though we have never heard of such a 

 thing. 



Heavy warm rain is bad enough heavy cold 

 rain is simply disastrous when it falls day after day, 

 for weeks, from the time when most partridge eggs 

 begin to hatch, until all except the second clutches 

 are hatched or flooded out. It is hardly worth 

 considering whether the wet or the cold claims most 

 victims : enough that if wet fails to bring about a 

 tragedy, cold finishes the work. The sunless days, 

 the everlasting rain, the drenching herbage, and the 

 sodden soil wipe out most broods to a bird. It is 

 not, as many suppose, a question of a good hatch 

 that controls the supply for September, but it is 

 simply a question of the weather for the first fortnight 

 after hatching. Usually, if any eggs in a nest hatch, 

 all the eggs hatch ; but we may say that if only half 

 the eggs in each nest hatched, and a fine fortnight 

 followed, more birds would be reared than if every 

 egg in each nest produced two chicks, and a drench- 

 ing fortnight then set in. 



