When shooting parties begin again strange stories are repeated about
pheasants and partridges. We remember hearing a learned disquisition
on the subject of the fox and the hen partridge; the argument was that
the fox is only occasionally successful when he makes a grab at a hen
partridge sitting on her eggs, and that the hen, after fluttering from
the jaws of death, will return unconcernedly to her duties. Further,
even if the fox were so lucky as to capture the hen, the cock partridge
would most obligingly take up the sitting and hatch the eggs. But
no case was cited where a fox had been known to attempt to catch a
sitting cock partridge--from which the inference might be drawn that
the fox has a special aversion to the sitting cock.
Much nonsense of this sort is swallowed with good faith by those not
closely in touch with foxes and game. We have an old book called "The
Life of a Fox: Written by Himself." In this we read that a sitting
bird acquires a thinness and flavour which are abhorrent to the taste
of a fox; nonsense guised as sense could hardly go further. It would
be grossly disparaging to the fox's skill to say that he fails once in
a hundred times when making a grab at a sitting bird; and we are sure
that a cock partridge does not take up the duties of his wife as often
even as a fox fails to bring off a catch. We have never known a cock
partridge to take the place of his murdered mate on the nest, but every
gamekeeper knows he will rear the brood when the hen is killed after
hatching.
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