PHEASANTS: IN PEACE r0g 
seldom lay again. Besides, ninety out of a hundred 
partridge eggs that fare so well as to hatch are 
hatched during the few days on either side of Mid- 
summer Day, the period of hatching varying slightly 
according to the locality and the forwardness or 
backwardness of the season. And so a few days of 
cold wet weather, or even a few heavy rain-storms, 
coming when the little partridges are less than ten 
days old, may not only decimate the broods, but 
destroy them wholesale. A rain-storm coming in 
the day-time is especially disastrous to foraging 
partridge chicks, which it overwhelms before they 
can reach the shelter of their parents. Storms at 
night are comparatively harmless. 
Another pull that wild-hatched pheasant chicks 
possess over little partridges is that the woods and 
spinneys, which are their natural haunts, besides 
being warmer than the open fields, offer better pro- 
tection from wet, and a ground-surface not given to 
holding water, so that young birds can get about 
and feed in comparative comfort. All the same, a 
pheasant chick does not enjoy some of the advantages 
of the little partridge in this way. The hen pheasant, 
as a hatcher of eggs, at the best of times cannot be 
compared to the hen partridge. The latter seldom 
fails to hatch every one of her eggs that has any 
hatch in it. In no case do I remember to have 
found that a partridge had left unhatched more than 
an egg or so which contained a chick (probably 
