The nest is usually on the ground; but on the farm of Lion Hall, in Essex, belonging to Colonel Hawker, a Partridge, in the year 1788, formed her nest, and hatched sixteen eggs, on the top of a pollard oak-tree! What renders this circumstance the more remarkable is, that the tree had fastened to it the bars of a stile, where there was a footpath; and the passengers, in going over, discovered and disturbed her before she sat close. When the brood was hatched, the birds scrambled down the short and rough boughs, which grew out all around the trunk of the tree, and reached the ground in safety. It has long been a received opinion among sportsmen, as well as among naturalists, that the female Partridge has none of the bay feathers of the breast like the male. This, however, is a mistake; for Mr. Montague happening to kill nine birds in one day, with very little variation as to the bay mark on the breast, he was led to open them all, and discovered five of them were females. On carefully examining the plumage, he found that the males could only be known by the superior brightness of colour about the head; which alone, after the first or second year, seems to be the true mark of distinction. They fly in coveys till about the third week in February, when they separate and pair; but if the weather be very severe, it is not unusual to see them collect together again. We are told that a gamekeeper, in Dorsetshire, hearing a Partridge utter a cry of distress, was attracted by the sound into a field of oats, when the bird ran round him very much agitated; upon his looking among the corn, he saw in the midst of her infant brood a large snake, which he killed; and perceiving its body much distended, he opened it, when to his astonishment two young Partridges ran from their prison, and joined their mother; two others were found dead in its stomach. Partridges have ever held a distinguished place at the tables of the luxurious: we have an old distich: “If the Partridge had the woodcock’s thigh, ’Twould be the best bird that e’er did fly.” [Illustration: THE QUAIL, (_Coturnix dactylisonans_,)]