PARTRIDGE. 2A 
eggs of a pair of Pheasants, the hen of which had been killed, 
on the estate of Colonel Burgoyne, in Essex. The hen 
bird alone sits, the male keeping watch, and when the young 
are hatched he joins the covey, and protects and feeds them 
with the dam. 
The eggs, which are of a pale greenish brown colour, are 
laid towards the end of May or the beginning of June, and 
are usually ten or twelve in number, but sometimes as many 
as fifteen, eighteen, or even twenty. The ‘Norfolk News’ 
mentions a nest hatched at Ditchingham between the 13th. 
and 18th. of April, 1851. Twenty-two eggs are recorded to 
-have been found in one nest, and thirty-one in another, two 
hen birds having occupied the same one, and in the former 
instance the cock bird gathered half of the united family under 
his wings, the pair sitting side by side, but looking different 
ways. ‘The young leave the nest almost as soon as they are 
“hatched. Incubation lasts about twenty-one days, beginning 
about the 20th. of June. 
‘It is a curious fact,’ says Mr. Jesse, ‘that when young 
Partridges are hatched and have left the nest, the two portions 
of each shell will be found placed the one within the other. 
I believe that this is invariably the case. This is doubtless 
done by the chicks themselves in their last successful effort 
to escape from prison.’ Only one brood is reared in the 
year, unless indeed the first nest be destroyed, and so a third, 
if the second happen to be, but in these cases the eggs are 
fewer, and the young are said to be less strong. 
The Partridge varies much in weight according to the quality 
of the country it inhabits. Male; weight about fifteen ounces; 
length, one foot and half an inch; bill, ight greyish blue, 
strong and short, the upper mandible a good deal curved, 
overhanging and extending beyond the lower one; iris, hazel; 
over and behind it is a bare space of bright red, and a band 
of light yellowish chesnut red, edged with grey. Forehead and 
head on the sides, light yellowish chesnut, edged with grey; 
crown, greyish brown, with slender yellow shaft lines; neck 
on the back and sides, and the nape, grey, minutely waved 
with blackish brown; chin and throat, light yellowish ches- 
nut, edged with bluish grey; breast, bluish grey, minutely 
freckled and waved with blackish brown, and on its lower 
part is a horse-shoe-shaped mark of brownish red, on a white 
ground; the shaft streaks white; on the sides it is barred with 
chesnut; back, minutely banded with dots of brownish black, 
