168 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 
there happening to be remarkably few turnips or thick 
cover of any sort. We beat every fence and every 
corner of each field—grass and all—rvunning round 
many of them to gain time, and to get the right side 
of the birds before they were disturbed, and though 
the total was nothing remarkable, and might be easily 
doubled in Norfolk, or other better partridge countries, 
yet it was a good example of what can be done ina 
very moderate country with no great stock of birds. 
The commonplace keeper has what I may be for- 
given for calling a ‘rooted’ idea that turnips are the 
natural home of the partridge. As a general rule my 
experience is that partridges are seldom found in 
turnips, especially swedes, until they have been driven 
into them, and many a bag is spoilt by the time 
consumed in laboriously walking such fields without 
getting more than a chance shot, while the coveys 
belonging to the ground are sitting quietly in the 
fallow, stubble, or grass within a hundred yards of 
you, fields which the keeper does not think worth while 
beating. They will no doubt resort to white turnips 
in hot dry weather to dust and feather themselves, 
especially when the crop is sown broadcast, as there 
are then certain open spaces here and there about the 
field, in which, as well as at the edges, you will find 
traces of their scratching and feathering—but swedes 
