ON A PARTRIDGE BEAT 23 
me, presumably, two lots of about eight partridge 
eggs. Of course, they would swear each lot of eggs 
came from a separate nest. It was impossible to 
prove otherwise, and it would have been bad policy 
to have hinted too broadly at trickery, however 
strongly one might suspect it. All partridge eggs 
are very much the same to the ordinary eye, but 
one generally can detect a similarity of shape among 
the eggs laid by individual birds. If the number of 
small clutches brought in seemed to me to be un- 
reasonable, and especially if the eggs in alleged 
separate nests bore a family resemblance, I would 
say that funds would not run to the customary 
shilling reward, except for respectable clutches. I 
had to listen to a good deal of gratuitous advice— 
more from a sense of politeness and diplomacy than 
because of its usefulness. One special hint, given 
just as the partridges were beginning to lay, was to 
the effect that all the keepers with whom my in- 
formant had had any ‘concerns’ lost no time in 
pressing at least a shilling into the hand of the 
finder so soon as a nest was found. My rule 
continued to be to pay a shilling for each nest of 
eggs, when safely hatched, if found in a reasonably 
legitimate way. It was only in very exceptional 
cases that I departed from this rule. 
Another plan to encourage the care of game was 
to give threepence for the right ear-tip of leverets. 
One man produced four ear-tips, and I gave him 
