There are some rather curious facts in connection with the brown English partridge and the French variety. Though different in their habits, and, it is said, even hostile to each other, they yet, in some instances, consort. I once shot on the moor three brown and one red-leg, out of the same covey, all young birds. They had evidently been reared together in one brood, and the old birds were of the brown species. Mentioning this to a friend of large experience, he told me that he had known several instances where the eggs of the two kinds had been found laid in the same nest. The eggs are, of course, easily distinguishable, those of the common partridge being of a greenish drab colour, while those of the red-leg are of a dull, cream colour, covered with small brown spots. I have been informed by another authority that the eggs of the red-leg have also been found in the nest of an outlying pheasant. {39} A curious provision of nature, conducing to the preservation of the species, may be here mentioned as interesting; the partridge, while sitting on her eggs, has no scent. On one occasion a man was consulting me about a tombstone at St. Andrew’s Church, Woodhall. We walked into the churchyard together, and stood conversing opposite the grave in question. I was aware that a partridge was sitting on her nest concealed in the grass between that grave and the next, and therefore would not approach very near. Suddenly I perceived that he had a terrier with him, which was very busily hunting over the churchyard. I begged him to keep it in. He was rather indignant, and replied that it could do no harm in the churchyard. I remarked that he was not aware that within eight or ten feet of us a partridge was on her nest, and I did not wish her to be disturbed. He thereupon called in his dog, but that only brought his dog nearer to the nest, hunting the while; and the dog actually passed over the nest without scenting the bird. {40} The eggs were hatched the next day, and that doubtless accounted for her sitting so closely. Whether or not from an instinctive consciousness of this safeguard is not for me to say, but the partridge is rather given to selecting her nesting place near a highway or a footpath. I have known several instances of this, and only last year I repeatedly saw both the parent birds sitting on their nest together, on a bank close to a public footpath which was daily traversed. To show how closely a partridge will continue to sit, under very trying circumstances, I give here an anecdote of what occurred in a parish adjoining Woodhall Spa, as it was related to me by the chief witness, the Squire himself.