THE PARTRIDGE. 377 
part of Europe, always being found most plentifully near cultivated ground. 
It feeds upon various substances, such as grain and seeds in the autumn, and 
green Jeaves and insects in the spring and early summer. 
Small slugs are a favourite diet with the Partridge, which has aspecial faculty 
for discovering them in the recesses where they hide themselves during the 
day, and can even hunt successfully after the eggs of these destructive crea- 
tures. Caterpillars are also eaten by this bird, and the terrible black grub of 
the turnip is consumed in great numbers. Even the white cabbage butter- 
fly, whose numerous offspring are so hurtful in the kitchen garden, falls a 
victim to the quick-eyed Partridge, which leaps into the air and seizes it in 
its beak as it comes fluttering unsuspectingly over the bird’s head. 
The Partridge begins to lay about the end of April, gathering together a 
bundle of dry grasses into some shallow depression in the ground, and de- 
positing therein a clutch of eggs, generally from twelve to twenty in number. 
GUINEA FOWL —(Mumida meleagris.) PARTRIDGE.—~(FPerdix cinereus.) 
Sometimes a still greater number have been found, but in these cases it is 
tolerably evident from many observations that several birds have laid in the 
same nest. 
When the young are hatched they are strong on their legs at once, running 
about with ease, and mostly leaving the nest on the same day. The mother 
takes her little new-born brood to their feeding-places, generally ant-hills or 
caterpillar-ha: nted spots, and aids them in their search after food by scratch- 
ing away the soil with her feet. 
The nests of the wood ant, which are mostly found in fir plantations or hilly 
ground, being very full of inhabitants, very easily torn to ;ieces, and the ants” 
and their larvze and pup being very large, are favourite feeding-places of 
the Partridge, which in such localities is said to acquire a better flavour than 
among the lower pasture lands. 
The young brood, technically called a “ covey,” associate together, and 
have a very strong local tendency, adhering with great pertinacity to the 
same field or patch of land. When together they are mostly rather wild, and 
dart off at the least alarm witb their well-known whirring flight. just topping a 
hedge or wall and settling on the other side till again put up ; but when the 
members of the covey are separated they seem to dread the air, and crouch 
closely to the ground, so that it is the object of the sportsman to scatter the 
covey and to pick them up singly. 
