PARTRIDGES AS PETS 49 
sound, and rising on the wing with their charac- 
teristic whirr, swept away across the fields and out of 
sight. The noon came and went, but the birds did 
not return. Mr. Hutchings instituted an anxious 
search for them in their favourite fields, but to no 
purpose. 
‘TI heard,’ he writes, ‘the reports of guns in a dis- 
tant field, which awoke me to a full consciousness of 
the jeopardy of my pets. Three, four, five .o’clock 
came, yet my birds did not. The sun began to cast 
his beams of golden hue over the tops of the trees in 
the distant wood, but no sound of my covey assailed 
my listening ears. A little before sunset my doubts 
and anxiety grew into something like a certainty that 
my covey had been half killed and the rest scattered, 
and the one that made the odd number, whichever 
that might be, was panting with agony, feeling the 
torture of a broken leg or wing, or both, dying of un- 
known quantities of pain under some unsympathising 
clod, when suddenly a whirring in the air scattered 
my fears, and in a moment the whole covey swept just 
over our heads and settled in the courtyard, with a 
rush and flurry that made us all jump with delight. 
In a few minutes the whole covey went into their 
domicile and were made prisoners for life.’? 
1 Field, Oct. 1, 1881. 
