48 



BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



on a large limb close to the main trunk and crouch so close that not 

 unfrequently they escape the notice of the eager hunter. A gentle- 

 man of my acquaintance some years ago while out hunting Pheasants 

 noticed a slight movement among some dead leaves in the top of an 

 oak tree, he raised his gun quickly and fired into the leaves when to 

 his^astonishment down came fourteen Partridges dead and wounded. 

 Partridges breed readily in confinement, and occasionally, though 

 rarely, become quite tame. Wilson says : " Two young Partridges 

 that were brought up by a hen, when abandoned by her associated 

 with the cows, which they regularly followed to the fields, returned 

 with them when they came home in the evening, stood by them while 

 they were milked, and again accompanied them to the pasture. They 

 remained during the winter, lodging in the stable, but as soon as 

 spring came they disappeared." 



FOOD. 



The food of this species consists principally of cereals, various small 

 seeds, berries, and in the breeding season insects, chiefly beetles, are 

 taken in limited numbers. B. M. Everhart, thewell-known naturalist 

 and botanist, informs me that four or five years ago he examined the 

 stomach-contents of twenty odd partridges which his brother had shot 

 when on a gunning excursion in Delaware, and found that all the 

 birds had fed exclusively on the seeds of skunk-cabbage (tiymplo- 

 carpus foeditus). 



