40 
WHERE TO FIND PARTRIDGES. 
will make even those which are not injured drop, and lie 
as if dead, it may be close to you, but it is generally into 
some thick bush, growing crop, or rank herbage, where it 
is difficult for the best-reared dog to find them. Hence 
the advantage of having markers to notice where they 
alight. If markers are not at hand to perform tliis service, 
beat for the missing birds as closely, as Craven says, as if 
you were looking for a needle in a barrel of hay. Accord- 
ing to this authority, * it ought to be the shooter's axiom 
that a bird which he has seen is worth a score that he hopes 
to see. Besides, nothing tends to make dogs more indus- 
trious and confiding — the latter a great point — than making 
them work on a spot where you are certain they will find, 
and where they do find. In such cases, too, the odds are 
you kill your bird or birds ; and your four-footed friend 
looks you in the face, as who shall say "all's well that 
ends well." ' The best spots for finding Partridges are the 
wheat stubbles, and the clover and potato fields, the furze 
covers, and the ferny heaths, and grassy warrens, and 
plantations with their undergrowth of 
Grasses green, and grasses golden, 
On their slender stems upholden, 
In the breezes waving, bending, 
Grace unto the field-paths lending ; 
Banks and hedge-rows glorifying, 
In their feathery lightness vying 
With the gauze- wing' d fly, that flitteth 
Gaily over them, or sitteth 
Por a moment 'mid the tangles 
Of their tresses, where, like spangles, 
Dewdrops hang, and gleam and glitter 
All around the joyous sitter. 
In places such as these the best single and double shots are 
to be obtained, and the greatest number of ^ birds' are to be 
bagged. And this reminds us that we call Partridges * birds * 
par excellence^ as, taking precedence of all other feathered 
game, they are the birds, plump, juicy, and delicious; 
national too, the commoner grey species perhaps exclu- 
sively so ; and this gives it a double value in the eyes of 
John Bull, who dearly loves a thing which is his own, and 
nobody else's. Not an amiable trait this in his character ; 
