on the Breeding of Hey's Rock-Partridge. 267


fancied the little broken-off pieces pricked the hen’s breast

and prevented her from sitting. I put in its place large

tussocks of coarse wood-grass.


O11 May 20th another egg was dropped in the outer aviary.

Meantime the birds had made a little shallow scratching near

one of the inner corners; in this I placed the egg and here the

hen continued to lay. By June 3rd she had laid ten eggs.

Whether she would ever sit seemed very doubtful; I therefore

decided to try these eggs under a hen. Unfortunately I had then

no bantams, and though I scoured the villages round I could not

find a broody bantam of any sort. However, I made the

best imitation I could of a common partridge’s nest in a bank

among some grasses, and there I put the ten eggs in the keep¬

ing of a smallish barred mongrel hen. She sat extremely well,

and on July 4th one egg was chipped. But twenty-four hours

later, as the chipping had gone no farther and the other eggs

showed no signs, I helped out the chipper and found a big dead

embryo in every other egg. This little chick throve well until

July 17th. At 11.30 of that sunny morning the chick was all

right: a few minutes later the barred hen stood listening to the

call of a distant game-cock, her foot on the crushed and lifeless

body of my first young Hey’s Partridge.


On the 10th of this month I had lost the hen partridge.

She died after having laid her thirty-sixth egg.


The story of my second venture goes rather better. On

June 21st I had set a black bantam 011 twelve more eggs, and

she had settled down well. These eggs began to be chipped on

July 14th. The chicks had just the same trouble in finding

their way out, and some died in the shell. Five were released

by my fingers and soon grew strong.


By July 8th another batch of twelve eggs had collected,

but still the partridge showed no signs of settling down to sit.

So on that day I placed the twelve under a game bantam pro¬

cured from a neighbour with the assurance that she had only

just begun to sit. She took kindly to her new eggs and sat

steadily until the last day of the month, when she suddenly

threw up sitting and all those eggs were spoiled.



