PARTRIDGES IN THE FIELDS 19 
How the fell partridge thrives, and by what 
exercise of strategy he manages to elude the vigilant 
attention of the greyhound foxes that are always 
roaming over the fells, can best be explained by the 
shepherds whose duties necessitate the devotion of 
their lives to the charge of the flocks which wander 
over the hill pastures. These uneducated men take 
an intelligent interest in the welfare of all the wild 
creatures that share with them the solitudes of the 
remote uplands. Quiet and undemonstrative in their 
exterior, they can often tell a good story by the side 
of a peat‘fire; nor do they disdain to relate their 
simple every-day experiences with fur and feather, 
beguiling their narrative with an occasional spice of 
dry and wholesome mother-wit. 
It is to these fell folk that you must go if you 
desire to learn whether the ravens are nesting this 
season in the same beetling precipice from which their 
young ones flew last year in safety, or whether the 
white vixen fox is still inhabiting her earth below the 
discarded quarry, or to hear the earliest news of the 
cuckoo’s arrival among the persecuted ‘moss-cheepers,’ 
They are sparing of words, are these simple moun- 
taineers, especially so with strangers ; but when once 
the ice has been broken, their reticence vanishes, and 
a flow of conversation follows.. They have trained 
c2 
