So far I have referred only to partridges which are
native wild birds. The mania for the bag is worse in regard to pheasants, and makes of the owner of the shoot a more commercial Bagman than any traveller, even if his samples are of skins and osprey plumes In a period of depression it is not unusual to breed, to " put down " ten thousand or even fifteen thousand birds, of wide!' many in these days
are of strange and various pl ge : Japanese versicolors, met' autistic mutants, Caucasians, Mongolians and the rest. A sports- man said to me the other day in effect : " When I laid shot sixty at one stand before the beat was nearly over. I stopped counting for sheer boredom." Very often little or no attempt is made to persuade or even enable the birds to rise high. There is nothing to be said against the hand-reared pheasant. The so-called tame bird is often a better flyer than the wild bird, which frequently takes to its legs ; and in -rocketing pheasant needs a peculiar skill. It is harder to ;shoot except after long-practice than a snipe. Nevertheless In nearly every, big bag -a large proportion of the birds art- " sitters " : the shoot is a massacre. A caustic gag to give one particular example—prevails in the village : it
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