PARTRIDGES. 
107 
walked round the tree, and round again, then ob- 
served the dog, whose eyes were, evidently, directly 
fixed upon the object itself, and still was I disap- 
pointed in perceiving nothing. In the mean time, 
the dog, working himself up to a pitch of impa- 
tience and violence, tore with his paws the trunk of 
the tree, and hit the rotten sticks and hark, jumping 
and springing up at intervals towards the game ; 
and five minutes had at least elapsed in this manner, 
when all at once I saw the eye of the bird. There 
it sat, or rather stood, just where Rover pointed, in 
an attitude so perfectly still and fixed, with an out- 
stretched 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 bough, 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 barking and baying with the 
greatest perseverance. There is, in fact, no limit to 
the stupidity of these creatures ; and it is by no 
no means unusual, 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*.” 
Yery different, indeed, from our straggling covies, 
are the assemblages of these birds in America. 
* Captain Head’s Forest Scenery . 
