PARTRIDGES. 
295 
elapsed in this manner, when all at once I saw the eye of the 
bird. There it sat, or rather stood, just where Eover pointed, 
in an attitude so perfectly still and fixed with an outstretched 
neck, and a body drawn out to such an unnatural length, that 
twenty times must I have overlooked it, mistaking it for 
a dead branch, which it most closely resembled. It was about 
twenty feet from the ground, on a hough, and sat eight or 
ten feet from the body of the tree. I shot it, and in the 
course of the morning killed four more, which I came upon 
much in the same way as I did upon the first. At one 
of these my gun flashed three times, without its attempting 
to move ; after which I drew the charge, loaded again, and 
killed it. The dog all the time was harking and haying with 
the greatest perseverance. There is, in fact, no limit to 
the stupidity of these creatures ; and it is by no means un- 
usual, on finding a whole covey on a tree in the Autumn, 
to begin by shooting the bird which happens to sit lowest, 
and then to drop the one above him, and so on till all are 
killed. 
Very different, indeed, from our straggling coveys, are the 
assemblages of these birds in America. Near Fort Churchill, 
on the shores of Hudson’s Bay, in the Winter season, they 
may he seen by thousands feeding on the willow-tops peeping 
above the surface of the snow. The crew of a vessel wintering 
there, killed one thousand eight hundred dozen in the course 
of the season. They are provided with a plumage well calcu- 
lated for the severe weather to which they are exposed, each 
feather being in a manner doubled, so as to give additional 
warmth. Our British Partridges huddle together in the 
stubbles, but these birds shelter and roost by burrowing under 
the snow : in the snow, too, they practise a common mode of 
escaping observation and pursuit, as they will dive under it 
as a Duck does in water, and rise at a considerable distance. 
The Indians, as well as European settlers, catch them in great 
abundance in traps, and live upon them throughout their long 
Winter. 
* Captain Head’s Fwest Scenery. 
