186 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 
make, I beg them to believe me sincere, and anxious 
only, in the interests of all sportsmen, to publish 
what I conceive to be the true deductions from a long 
experience of various manors, large and small, plenti- 
fully stocked, and the reverse. 
I will start by saying that most English manors 
have not anything like the stock of partridges which 
they ought to produce. This I attribute to three 
causes. First, the keeper’s work is not, so far as 
partridges are concerned, well understood or properly 
carried out. Second, which is a result in part of the 
first, there is a good deal more egg-stealing and 
poaching than there should be. Third, the stock, 
being low, is too much reduced by hard shooting. 
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire are, without 
doubt, the pick of the English counties for game, yet 
in 1887, every one was electrified to hear that all the 
records of these counties had been beaten in Hamp- 
shire! Had it been Yorkshire or Essex, or say 
Nottinghamshire or Northamptonshire, many would 
have wondered, but have recollected that in these 
counties there have always been the traditions of 
great ‘shikar.’ But Hampshire seemed incredible. 
A few, who had years before noted the good soil and 
the improving totals of this county, were not so much 
surprised, but to the majority of the world it was 
