A LATE PARTRIDGE.
In one harvest field a partridge, or rather two partridges (for the cock sits as well as the hen), hatched fifteen eggs on September 4th. Now the standard date for the hatehing is just three months earlier ; and partridges never—I think— lay a second time if the first family is hatched. It was not possible to trace the previous calamities that led to this late hatching; but not so far away were a few acres of clover,
• which the farmer mowed hi June and left to grow again for seed purposes. This seed crop—cut last week—was full of old partridges, and the farmer said that at the first cutting he had destroyed no fewer than eight nests, all just ready tO hatch. Most of the nests had at least fifteen eggs. What a waste ! what a cruelty ! and the loss shows how small changes in the technique of farming may affect the population
of birds. It may be that partridges flourish most in corn growing districts, not because of the food, but because the nests are =destroyed, while birds that trust. to grass are mown out and do not breed again. Another • example of the damage
to birds by changes in farming is the wholesale destruction of plovers' nests by rollers in spring.
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