BIRDS 337 



in the seventeenth century to those of the present day. We 

 may therefore infer, without much fear of contradiction, that the 

 conversion of swamps and mosses into sound arable land has 

 materially favoured the increase of the Partridge in Lakeland. 

 Mowing machines prove fatal to a good many chicks. The 

 operations of poachers during the last nights of August are 

 generally well planned, and often successfully carried out. But 

 in spite of some disadvantages, we have generally a sufficiently 

 good show of Partridges to satisfy the requirements of sports- 

 men. Nor are sportsmen the only persons interested in the 

 preservation of this favourite bird. Whether the ice morsels 

 whirl in gusts and eddies before the furious blast of the north 

 wind, the warm breath freezing on our beards as we force our 

 way across the high grounds of Westmorland, — or whether the 

 honeysuckle and variously- coloured orchids burden the still air 

 of a summer evening with their heavy perfume, — it is always a 

 joy to recognise the rasping call of the brown bird that runs to 

 squat beside its fellows already huddling together in the snow 

 drift ; or that watches ever so anxiously beside its sitting mate. 

 But even this must yield place to the superior pleasure of 

 startling the old hen from the shelter of the ancient tree-stump 

 in the deer-park, disclosing as she retreats the olive treasures 

 that so soon will crack and shiver before the onset of the tiny 

 downy captives which must find a way of exit from their fragile 

 cradles of thin lime. In some seasons a good many early broods 

 are reared. But a local record of the discovery on the 1st of 

 April of a newly-hatched covey of eight chicks, discovered at 

 Wreaksand, near Broughton-in-Furness, in the year 1827, might 

 have been considered a fairy tale had it not been vouched for by 

 the Carlisle Journal. 



Two expressions used in connection with this species deserve 

 notice. ' Pubble,' says Mr. Dickinson, ' is Cumbrian for plump. 

 Grain well fed is "pubble as a partridge."' 1 I happened to 

 show to Smith of Drumburgh a sketch of a bird drawn in the 

 act of sunning its plumage; he remarked : ' It would be balming 

 itself. You often see Partridges do the same; and so folk 

 speak of "A balm of Partridges." ' The Rev. T. P. Hartley has 



1 Glossary, p. 11. 

 Y 



