Birds. 



6011 



severe tlie weather has been for weeks together at the times of observa- 

 tion), that such cases are extremely rare. 



There is a question of considerable interest connected with the 

 partridge, to which I have never seen a satisfactory answer, and in- 

 deed scarcely a satisfactory attempt at an answer. I mean the nature 

 of the injury — fatal injury — which causes the bird " to tower." In 

 some cases the partridge shot at goes away apparently untouched; in 

 others, gives that slight flinch which many an inexperienced person 

 w^ould take no note of, but w4iich is significant enough to the sports- 

 man's eye ; in others again the legs, one or both, of the w^ounded 

 bird drop, as if paralysed from the thigh joint downwards, it flies with 

 a strange unsteady flight, wavering from side to side, — wobbling" I 

 have heard it called, — and after a course of a few score yards, or pos- 

 sibly almost half a mile, the bird soars up, sometimes to a great 

 height, and falls almost perpendicularly, and always and most evi- 

 dently quite dead. When found after towering they almost invariably 

 are seen to lie on their back; sometimes, but by no means invariably, 

 a little blood is oozing from the bill ; but very frequently, when the 

 quarry has been shot from some distance, there is no injury whatever 

 apparent as it lies in your hand. It may be said it would be very easy 

 to settle the question by dissection : let the " towered" birds be kept 

 by themselves and carefully examined after the day's sport is over. 

 My answer to that is, that the result would be less satisfactory than it 

 seems likely to be ; and for this reason, — that it is so very seldom 

 only one grain of shot strikes a partridge that is brought to bag : so 

 that, even if the shooter has the requisite skill and experience for 

 properly examining so small a body as the partridge's, still out of a 

 hundred cases he might find but one, or not one, with the single wound 

 w^hich had caused death accompanied with towering. I am, in theory 

 only, inclined to suppose there is — at least in some cases — a twofold 

 injury; 1 mean an injury to two vital parts or organs. I have no 

 doubt when the leg or legs fall or drop that the spine is injured, and 

 I am aware that an injury in the lower part of the heart is not accom- 

 panied with instant death.* It is therefore possible at least, that 



* " I found, on opening the stag, that the ball had passed through the lower part 

 of his heart, a wound I should have imagined sufficient to have deprived any animal 

 of life and motion instantaneously. But I have shot several deer through the heart, 

 and have observed that when hit low they frequently run from 20 to 80 yards. If, 

 however, the ball has passed through the upper part of the heart, or has cut the large 

 blood-vessels immediately above it, death has been instantaneous, the animal dropping 

 without a struggle.' —6^^. Johns Field Notes, ii. 90. 



