30 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PARTRIDGE 
preferring to perish at her post rather than to desert 
her precious charges. Many other birds would do the 
same. 
Years ago, when wandering through the pic- 
turesque birch woods of the Dee valley, we climbed 
to a chaffinch nest, only to find the little hen lying 
dead upon the eggs which she had died to incubate. 
But the partridge is a bird of stronger attachments 
than most feathered fowl. The nest itself scarcely 
deserves the usual title, being, in fact, hardly more 
than a slight scraping in the surface of the soil, a 
cavity of no depth, redeemed from absolute bareness 
by the addition of a few leaves, dead and dry as 
tinder, and a few stems of withered grass—as unpre- 
tentious an affair as could be imagined, but yet 
amply sufficient after all for the purpose which it has 
to serve. Many partridges still nestle out in the 
open fields, but experience plays an important part in 
the economy of Nature. The frequent destruction of 
nests in the open meadows has convinced many female 
partridges of the advantages supplied to nesting birds 
by the shelter afforded by the briars and brambles 
that festoon the banks of the older and untrimmed 
hedgerows. Similarly, an old and bleached root of a 
tree, to all appearances cumbering the soil uselessly 
enough, in reality provides a serviceable shelter to a 
