{38} Another anecdote of the said keeper may here be given, which is amusing. Soon after the above incident he gave notice to quit his place, in order (as he said) to better himself. He had often heard me descant on the charms of grouse shooting and deer-stalking, and he came to me to ask me to help him to a situation in Scotland. I got him the post of keeper on a large moor on the shores of Loch Ness. He was a man with a big head, a bulky body, and with rather weak bandy legs (not unlike many a sketch in “Punch”), and though a good English keeper, and able to stride along through the turnips, in a level country like our own, he was not adapted for mountaineering. One season in the Highlands cooled his ardour, and the very next year he called on me again, being out of place. “Well,” I asked my friend, “how is it you’re here again”? “To tell you the truth, sir,” he replied, “I could not stand those barelegged Highland gillies. [N.B.—He had, himself, no fine calves to show.] They were always a-laughing at me. And their gaelic was worse than Latin and Greek. You’ll never catch me in Scotland again.” We can picture to ourselves the bandy legs bearing the unwieldly body up a steep brae side; stumbling over loose stones, struggling through the tall heather, till breathless he would pause, while the agile gillies would, chuckling, leave him behind; pause and ponder with the conclusion not slowly arrived at, “What a fool I was to leave Woodhall for work like this.” The Sassenach was indeed out of his element on the Scotch hills. He took my advice; picked up a wife half his own age, and now keeps a country public-house, where he can recount his Scotch and other adventures at the bar. {39} This is also confirmed by a writer in the “Naturalist,” of 1895, p. 67. He says the bird “is very erratic in its nesting habits.” He has found its egg in a pheasant’s nest, and in two cases the egg laid on the bare ground. Only last season I myself found an egg lying without any nest. {40} This peculiar protective property is not confined to the partridge, but seems to apply to game birds generally. The keeper on the Woodhall shooting reported to me, on one occasion, that a pheasant had nested close to a footpath, where she was certain to be disturbed, and asked permission to take the eggs to hatch under one of his hens. Mr. E. M. Cole reports in the “Naturalist” of 1892, p. 182, _Phasianus Colchicus_ nest of seven or eight eggs “found May 6th, on the road margin.” Mr. J. Watson, in his book “Sylvan Folk,” says: “A party of ornithologists were trying to get a specimen of the ptarmigan in breeding plumage, but failed up to luncheon time. Sitting down, the lunch was unstrapped from a pony, and a strap fell on a ptarmigan, sitting, actually, under the pony. On another occasion a dog sat down upon the hen ptarmigan, which it had not discovered in the middle of the party.”—“Sylvan Folk,” p. 147, Fisher Unwin, 1889.