202 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 
tive work themselves, they have to maintain cordial 
and constant relations with the police, they generally 
know pretty accurately where every long net, the 
kind most used for rabbits, is kept. This knowledge 
is essential in those parts to enable them to watch 
and break up the big gangs of poachers, who would 
otherwise strip them of every head of game. They 
are, however, exposed to the visits of strange gangs 
from a distance, who will sometimes have travelled 
fifty miles by train to visit some particular preserves 
in a locality where they are not known. 
In all districts, however good the keepers, there is 
danger from the visits of such strangers. The only 
material protection is exhaustive bushing, but the real 
remedy lies in knowing the owners of the nets and their 
movements. Bushing must not be confined to grass 
fields only, as partridges often roost on stubble or 
fallow, and it must be thoroughly done, the bushes of 
thorn not too few and far between, and so stuck in as 
to be almost prone upon the ground rather than 
upright. 
The tunnel-net is, so far as I know, obsolete, but 
a:quaint description of the method of using it is given 
below.! The account is remarkable, as is also the 
’ © Tunnelling partridges is a most destructive method ; it 
cannot be so well practised in an enclosed country, from the 
