128 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



offspring. I suppose they had been all destroyed 

 by the ravenous birds, or wanted shelter to breed 

 in, as the nature of that bird is to hide amongst 

 corn, broom, whins, etc., none of the two last of 

 which it could have here." 



In Ireland the Red-legged Partridge is un- 

 known, except as an introduced species in the 

 county Galway. 



The alleged enmity between Grey and Red- 

 legged Partridges is a fiction. (See The Zoologist, 

 1889, p. 119, and Babington's Birds of Sufi oik, 

 p. 109.) So says Lord Walsingham, who calls it "a 

 popular error " in his volume on " Shooting," in the 

 Badminton Library (p. 144). The two species are 

 found together in the same fields, and will some- 

 times lay in each other's nests. It is only in the 

 pairing time that the cock birds become pugnacious, 

 and drive away intruders. 



