38 
A FIGHTING BIRD. 
is the art of a bird. The power, then, that contrives the plan is a 
master of all the circumstances ; and surely that which operates so 
infallibly, so as not to be open to even a suggestion from human intel- 
ligence, yet possessed by a bird, is a faculty very different from man's 
intellect. If the design, therefore, is the result of skill and observa- 
tion, the intelligence of the partridge is superior to human reason ; 
but its being partly skill and observation, and partly instinct, is a 
combination we cannot understand. It is just like instinct in all its 
particulars, and instinct we call it. All Partridges do it uniformly, 
and all equally perfect. The bird that has never had a brood of 
young before, will go tlirough the operation as skilfully as one that 
has had twenty. This is instinct with a witness, and we do not see 
the necessity or the use of bringing in any other power as an explana- 
tion to the phenomenon. 
Partridges, too, will often figlit desperately witli other 
birds in defence of tlieir young. That arch-depredator the 
Carrion- Crow has been attacked by a pair of them, and 
obliged to surrender the nice young fledgling which he had 
seized for the purpose of making a feast ; and when a Kite 
has been hovering over a brood of young Partridges, the 
parents have been known to fly up, screaming and fighting 
with all their might, in order to beat off the assailant. But 
instances of this kind might be multiplied to almost any 
extent, did we deem it necessary to call more witnesses 
into court, to prove that under some circumstances the 
Partridge will fight, and desperately too, for all its natural 
timidity of character. 
Haste, ere the sun hath drunk the dev/s: 
Boon Nature to her banquet woos ; 
Around, the smiling fields no more 
Are waving with their golden store ; 
Homeward bears the loaded wain, 
The golden glories of the plain ; 
And nut-brown Partridges are seen 
Gliding among the stubble screen : 
There's joy and gladness in the skies ; 
Loiterer, from thy couch arise ! 
Thus singeth Craven, in the * Sporting Eeview,' bidding his 
slumbering brother-sportsman bestir himself, to brush with 
hasty steps the grass of the upland lea, while the dew-drops 
yet glisten in the level sunbeams, and the shadows of tree 
and stile, of man and dog, are projected far across the land- 
