AS CONCERNING PARTRIDGE-NESTS 39 
involved is the continuation of the species, which 
can only be perpetuated at a loss. The reason for 
this must be looked for in the risks attaching to the 
rearing of the young birds, which are exposed to the 
attacks of snakes and ground vermin by reason of 
their terrestrial habits. 
The number of eggs appears, likewise, to vary 
with the conditions surrounding the reproduction of 
the young. If the food supply be plentiful, and the 
weather. propitious, the chances of a large number of 
eggs being laid are naturally enhanced. The par- 
tridge is so small a bird that we should hardly expect 
her to cover more than a dozen eggs in her nest. 
Sometimes the number falls, we admit, as low as six 
or seven ; but such small clutches are generally the 
result of a second laying. On the other hand, we 
can vouch for such numbers as nineteen and twenty- 
one eggs being laid and incubated by a single bird. 
The precision with which every separate egg is packed 
neatly into its own proper space in the nest is truly 
marvellous. Sometimes two hen partridges lay in one 
nest, when their combined contribution has been 
known to reach a total of thirty-six, not including a 
pheasant’s addition of a single egg—+hirty-one 
chicks hatched out of the thirty-seven eggs, thirty of 
the number being young partridges. 
