unneighbourly to use a mild phrase-proceeding than this? and yet I fear it is by no means a rare one.

If owners of large shootings would only take a little trouble and find out for themselves whence the eggs their keepers procure come, and not leave the matter entirely in their employés' hands, the professional 'egger' would soon be compelled to give up this particular form of thieving and take to something else. Moreover, if the county and borough police would keep an eye on those they know to be 'receivers' of stolen eggs, and make life a trifle more trying to those personages than is often the case now, something could thus be done towards diminishing this shooting evil. A careful watch over country roads just where they enter small towns in counties which have the reputation for regular 'egging,' is often an effective method of reducing the zeal of the loafers and unemployed' who carry on this species of profession.

I have before mentioned that in my opinion the partridge takes high rank with respect to both its edible and sporting value. Touching the former consideration I shall be silent. So many writers have dealt with its culinary aspects that I feel little can be added to the numerous recipes which cause this bird to be so warmly greeted whenever it appears on the table. But possibly there may still be something left to be said with regard to the sport afforded by the partridge throughout Great Britain.

I am not at all certain that it is those privileged to participate in the best partridge-driving who obtain the greatest amount of enjoyment the bird affords. It is wonderful how keen men of all sorts and conditions become as soon as the First of September arrives. One gentleman holding an important position in a great City business told me last year, when I met him in the autumn, that he had taken a two days' holiday so as to secure the First, and remarked that he had had a capital day's sport. I asked him if he had made a long day of it, and he replied, 'Fairly so; I was out about half-past six in the morning.' This showed real energy and determination, for it is no joke walking up partridges for twelve hours or so, especially when, as must have been the case in the present instance, the condition of the sportsman is anything but first-rate. But my friend's sporting instincts were more than a match for any bodily discomforts, and physical fatigue only accentuated the pleasurable recollections of a good day's sport.

Personally I abominate early rising and take leave to differ from the old adage dealing with this subject. As a question of

sport, moreover, I fancy it is an exploded theory that the young hours of the morning are the best wherein to obtain a big bag: this applying to fishing equally with shooting. No man, if he has been walking steadily from seven or eight in the morning, can shoot as accurately in the afternoon and evening-the cream of the day for making a good bag-as he would have done had he started about ten or half-past, which is full early enough. The usual fault would, almost to a certainty, be committed namely, that of shooting low and behind.' The left arm would surely 'drop' a little, and shots which earlier in the day would have come under the heading of 'certainties,' would result only in either misses, or worse still, in slightly wounding the birds.

Of course it would be foolish to say that really good partridgedriving is not a most delightful form of sport. In fact, driving, whether good or bad, so long as it is well managed, is to my thinking perhaps the most desirable kind of shooting to be found in this country. Walking partridges is very pleasant, and much to be enjoyed; but between the two methods of shooting I do not imagine there can be any comparison possible.

It is infinitely harder to kill partridges coming over, say, a belt than it is to 'plug' them getting up in front of one out of a turnip field. In the former case the shots are prettier in every way, as well as more difficult. There is infinitely more variety in the ways partridges come to the guns when driven than there is in the manner they rise from a turnip or any other field. And, furthermore, to drive a country well and successfully, especially if the shooting area be small, demands both knowledge and skill on the part of master and man. A shrewd bird is the partridge, as a rule; and if he has been driven over a particular fence two or three times during the season, when next a similar attempt to drive him is made in all probability he will go straight back over the beaters' heads, shout they never so loudly.

Often, too, have I heard a line of guns placed in a lane or narrow field ordered simply to 'reverse' for the next drive. This is, I am sure, a mistake. For this manoeuvre is generally executed for the purpose of bringing back to their original habitat the birds from the first drive, in addition to those belonging to the new ground. Partridges are wise enough to shy the fence from behind the shelter of which so many of their companions met their fate, and are very apt to break away right and left. It is far better-I am taking for granted there is plenty of room to do so-to shift the line, so as to

bring one of the flanks to about the place where the centre gun stood during the first drive. Two or three beaters can easily work into the drive the ground thus left 'empty' by the alteration in the situation of the shooters; the birds will be deceived by not being driven back directly over the same hedge, and a successful result will probably be achieved; whereas if the guns had not been moved at all, but had simply turned round in their tracks, very likely only the outside men of the line would have had any shooting worth speaking of, the partridges avoiding the centre portion of the fence behind which they would fancy their enemies to be concealed.

But all this has to do with driving; and if I cannot put 'walking up' partridges quite as high in the handicap as my favourite method, still it is capital fun when properly managed. Various occasions recur to memory when partridges seemed anxious to combine for the purpose of affording bot.: driving and walking shots.

There are great stretches of heath land in various countiesnotably Suffolk and Norfolk-covered with bracken and furze, interspersed with small straggling fir plantations, wherein lurk many wild pheasants, and where, after the line has walked some distance, the partridges begin, instead of going forward, to break back; swinging from the flanks to the centre, and from the centre to the flanks, they present the most curling' sporting shots conceivable. The mere fact of shooting over such wild, attractive country is in itself a real pleasure; and any one fortunate enough to take part in such a day's sport is to be thoroughly congratulated.

I confess that huge turnip fields, of the type existing on the Scottish border, have not so much attraction for me as the broken, picturesque ground to be found almost anywhere in the Eastern Counties, and in the South and North of England. For, excellent and enjoyable sport though it is, the crossing and recrossing, the wheeling and walking necessary to secure a bag in a turnip field of fifty or sixty acres, the said turnips being up to one's middle or thereabouts, apparently-is a big undertaking, and one which, especially if the sun be hot, becomes at certain periods of the day somewhat monotonous. It is then that the eye instinctively travels round the field to note to which hedge or wall it would be possible to drive, and a faint hope flickers in one's breast that the host may perhaps think well to have just one or two small impromptu drives by way of a termination.

But touching the rough ground to which I have just alluded no partridge-walking can be prettier than that which sometimes occurs in certain places on the South Coast-and remember that Hampshire has of late years taken rank as almost the best of the partridge counties of England.

I have in my recollection a particular half-hour's walking which used to be interpolated in a day's driving in that county. The Solent was on the one hand, and a wild, pleasant common, stretching for miles, on the other. By means of sundry drives on the heath the partridges were gradually worked down to the broken, ferny ground near the shore. Then the line was formed, and from out of scattered whin bushes, sea-grass tussocks, clumps of stunted hollies; from behind tiny sand hills and out of velvety grass hollows-ideal putting-greens for a golf links !-up rose the partridges. The birds, swinging back to get to their haunts on the heath, afforded peculiarly fascinating shots, and indeed sometimes it happened that the gun on the sea flank dropped his victim into the gleaming waters of the Solent. This was, if one may venture to so term it, the very poetry of shooting; but, alas! not many days like it are obtainable.

Again, any one who has enjoyed himself on the moor edges in Scotland, walking after-often very much 'after'-the small wild partridges of those parts, will, I am sure, agree with me that the sport he then obtained, let alone the beauty of the scenery by which he was surrounded, was something always to be treasured as a most pleasurable remembrance. Of course during a day's shooting such as this several other kinds of game besides partridges are added to the bag. The stray pieces of heather on the hillsides above the straggling, badly walled-in oat patches-oats which apparently are always green, never ripe-usually hold a grouse or two; amongst the stretches of rough grass are swampy bits from which an old snipe may be secured, while the ubiquitous and inevitable rabbit is generally in evidence.

If it be late in October the whins and bracken clumps may shelter a woodcock, and so, although the main object of such a day's sport is partridge-shooting, still extras' of this kind add largely to the sportsman's interest and satisfaction.

By the way, it was during a moor edge day similar to the one just alluded to that I saw one of the strangest freaks of nature as regards the colour of partridges that has ever come under my notice. It was a good many years ago in Perthshire. Four of us were shooting partridges over some lovely wild ground under the shadow of big hills, when from out of a stretch of