POACHING PARTRIDGES 79 
poacher tocarrya sack of partridges to a strange station, 
and there to book the goods to the dealer, attaching the 
‘printed labels of a licensed dealer in game as the most 
effectual means of allaying inconvenient suspicion. 
Sometimes the birds are packed in soap-boxes and 
consigned to some small general dealer. Others call in 
the assistance of their womankind, who carry the birds 
‘to wash’ in baskets of foul linen, or stow them in the 
trunk of the ‘ servant girl,’ who is going out to a ‘new 
place.’ 
A more open method of securing the sale of 
poached partridges is to impress the co-operation of 
some individual who himself shoots a few acres, and 
takes out a gun licence to serve as a blind which may 
cover other irregularities. Such a man does not 
hesitate to add a score or two of netted partridges 
to the single brace which honestly fell to his own gun 
the previous day. Some game-dealers have a private 
entrance for early visitors, approached by some more 
or less circuitous route on the plea of feeding the pigs 
or filling a bucket with spring water. If the normal 
means of despatching game are suspended, recourse 
must be had to itinerant hawkers, many of whom are 
adroit enough at bartering away poached game in the 
prosecution of their ordinary traffic. 
The trade in live partridges has received consider- 
