SOME RECORDS AND COMPARISONS 225 
pheasants—which, up to then, were usually small—to 
improve with steady and wonderful rapidity, and it is 
only in very recent years, and in a very few places, 
that, in spite of the advantage of the breechloader, 
these bags of partridges have been ever equalled. , 
Does not this appear to corroborate the view, 
expressed in the last chapter, that in proportion as a 
keeper's time is occupied with pheasants, so will his 
partridges suffer? Of course, the reduced shelter to 
the birds afforded by more modern farming and the 
reclaiming and clearing of all waste or rough land, 
has a good deal to do with it, as no doubt has the 
ill-feeling on the subject of game which has been 
engendered in places among the tillers of the soil 
by injudicious and greedy landlords, as well as by 
agitation for political objects. But the re-increase of 
partridges in many places appears to show that these 
evils will right themselves, and the farmer may cease 
to look upon the gamekeeper as an atural enemy 
whom he only sees on the rare occasions when a few 
hard words pass between them in the neighbourhood 
of a covert overstocked with ground game. 
I here append the totals of the best weeks at The 
Grange, Lord Ashburton’s place in Hampshire, be- 
fore spoken of, in 1887, the Jubilee year, as well as 
in 1891 and 1892, this estate having in those years 
Q 
