48 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
lavished so ungrudgingly, but unnecessarily, on 
pheasants. By way of publishing how much he 
observes, he actually will go so far as to make some 
pretence at restraining the trespassing proclivities 
of his dog when he passes through a wood, lest 
the fiend disturb the pheasants—just as if they were 
neurotic individuals ordered the rest-cure. Two 
minutes later he fails to take the slightest notice 
when partridge after partridge flies up from under 
his brute’s nose—from nests, of course. I never 
can make out why this man—call him what you 
will ; I’ve called him several things !—so dearly loves 
to be considered superior to the townsmen in 
sporting science, or why he will persist in con- 
sidering that pheasants alone constitute ‘disturbable’ 
game. I wonder on how many occasions, when I 
have been asked whether people might take strolls 
in certain parts of a shoot, and I have answered 
that I had no objection provided that they did not 
tread in the hedge-sides, or hold rollicking picnics 
in certain dells, or take with them a dog guaranteed 
innocent of malice aforethought and everything else, 
have I heard the remark: ‘Why? W/Z it disturb 
the pheasants ? 
Slowly, but none the less surely, partridges will 
forge their way to the top of the pole—not only as 
the most popular game-birds in the country, but as 
the cheapest to produce, and in many other ways 
the most desirable. There is only one fault that the 
