PARTRIDGES 39 
Who knows? Who cares? Certainly not the 
men who spend every day that the law allows them 
during the remainder of the year pursuing any birds 
which happen to be on their shoot. I really believe 
that there must be men in existence who are under 
the impression that partridges spring up, as it were, 
spontaneously, after the manner of charlock plants ; 
that is, sometimes there arise many and sometimes 
few. On the general run of partridge ground there 
is never anything like a stock of birds at the end of 
the season. It is a melancholy fact that the same 
remark applies in countless instances to capital 
natural partridge ground, even on the First. Yet 
the few people who realize how partridges respond 
to careful protection and encouragement have been 
reaping rich harvests. For instance, you hear, as in 
a delicious dream of a fairyland of partridges, of a 
week at Holkham, at The Grange, at Stratton, and 
a few other places where partridges are estimated at 
their proper value and treated accordingly. 
But to return to the lucky survivors (many of 
them cripples) of the preceding season on ordinary 
partridge ground on February 2. How are they 
faring in the bleak, wind-swept fields, covered often 
for days together with snow, or adamant with frost ? 
And who cares? Perhaps the keeper—probably he 
does not; for, obviously, so far as practical care is 
shown, the master makes the man. At any rate, 
I feel pretty sure that the men who have been 
