Relieved for a space by my own decree from the mere labour of searching for topics in the newspaper press of the United Kingdom, I have been seeking recreation in the pursuit, how often unavailing, of the partridge. "Come down on Thursday next," wrote my friend, HARTEY, "for four or five days. We are going to shoot our outsides." This was sufficiently alarming, but it was obviously better than shooting our insides, and accordingly on the appointed day the county of Norfolk received me. * * * Would that it were sufficient on these occasions merely to arouse the primitive sporting instinct of man, to revert to the fringe of barbarism and to sally out, scantily clothed, with sling or bow or snare, in quest of game. But alas, the curse of civilisation cannot be got rid of; one has to think of cartridges, cartridge-bags, caps, boots, gaiters, stockings, and heaven knows what besides. And in the end the odds are quite ten to one that you forget your cartridge-magazine, or that your beautiful new pair of patent hammerless ejector guns get left under the seat of the railway-carriage and become for a day or two the sport of station-masters and porters on the Great Eastern Railway. * * * "Shooting the outsides" is a sport by itself. Your one desire is to keep the birds off the land of your neighbours; the one desire of the birds is to seek that land. Your best covey gets up and pops comfortably into a lovely root-field a couple of hundred yards away, but you cannot go after it, for the field belongs to another property, and the derisive birds can chirp and run at their ease, while you tramp on, shotless, under a broiling sun. However, the outsides have to be made good, and now and then a slice of luck rewards you. For instance, if a neighbouring vicar has given notice that after a certain date he means to shoot over his own glebe, your delight is all the keener when you all but annihilate a large covey of birds whose home is on the glebe. * * * There is much humour in dogs. Your own retriever, whom you have broken yourself, is of course the quietest and best-behaved dog in the world. He also possesses the surest nose and the softest mouth. Why, then, does he choose a moment when everybody is looking to run in wildly and disturb every bird in the field? Or why, when you have sent him in pursuit of a runner, does he lie down and pant, while the keeper's dog, a tangled door-mat of the poodle species, solidly, and without ostentation, tracks down the wounded bird, and finally deposits it at the keeper's feet, just as you are assuring everybody that there is not a vestige of scent, and that no dog could possibly be expected to work in such weather. * * *