62 



PARTRIDGE. 



Lord Ban try, or members of his family) I frequently find covies far distant from any 

 cultivated land. Curiosity caused me to examine what they fed on, and I found in 

 their stomachs some seeds of a coarse kind of grass indigenous to the place, some kind 

 of green herbage, and a quantity of spiders that are numerous among the heath." 



In Ireland this bird, although very generally distributed, appears to be usually found 

 in much less abundance than in England, and, from some unexplained cause, seems to 

 have greatly diminished in numbers of late years. Mr. Thompson, in his excellent 

 "Natural History of Ireland," has entered pretty fully into the supposed causes of this 

 decrease; but as yet nothing positive has been proved. Mr. Thompson has mentioned 

 the following among other believed injurious influences, namely, the prevalence of the 

 custom of pickling seed wheat in poisonous solutions, to prevent the ravages of wire- 

 worms, etc. This wheat, when eaten by the birds, has frequently been known to cause 

 their death. As this is a matter of great importance, not only in Ireland but also in 

 England, we give the following as quoted by Mr. Thompson. The circumstances were men- 

 tioned in all the newspapers at the time, and will be fresh in the minds of most of our 

 readers : — 



"Attention was lately called to this matter in England. — Doctor Henry William Fuller, 

 of St. George's Hospital, sent the following communication to "The Lancet:" — 'For some 

 months past, in certain parts of Hampshire, Partridges have been found dead in the 

 fields, presenting a very remarkable appearance. Instead of lying prostrate on their 

 sides, as is usually the case with dead birds, they have been found sitting with their 

 heads erect, and their eyes open, presenting all the semblance of life. This peculiarity, 

 which for some time had attracted considerable attention among sportsmen in the 

 neighbourhood, led to no practical result until about ten days ago, when a covey of ten 

 birds having been found nestled together in this condition, two of the birds, together 

 with the seeds taken from the crops of the remaining eight, were sent up to London 

 for examination.' By analysis, Dr. Fuller discovered considerable quantities of arsenic 

 in the viscera of the birds; this was traced to the seed corn in their crops. Inquiry 

 established that 'in Hampshire, Lincolnshire, and many other parts of the country, the 

 farmers are now in the habit of steeping their wheat in a strong solution of arsenic, 

 previous to sowing it, with the view of preventing the ravages of the wire-worm on the 

 seed, and of the smut on the plant when grown; that this process is found to be 

 eminently successful, and is, therefore, daily becoming more and more generally adopted; 

 that even now many hundred-weights of arsenic are yearly sold to agriculturists for 

 this express purpose; that although the seed is poisonous when sown, its fruit is in no 

 degree affected by the poison; that wherever this plan has been extensively carried out, 

 Pheasants and Partridges have been poisoned by eating the seed, and the Partridges 

 have been almost invariably found sitting in the position I have already described; and, 



