A tAJCIC YEAS.
Last week I put a query about the astonishing excess of cock-birds among pheasants this season. It is curious that my own experience seems to square exactly with the writer of a letter to the Field, who wrote before my paragraph appeared, and whose letter is dated from a different district of England. He states .the same fact and puts the same question. It would be interesting if a mass of evidence could be collected from different districts and collated. A not unimportant secret in the determination of sex may be involved. It is sometimes alleged that at seasons when breeding is very profuse the cock tends to be in excess. But this year our game birds are abnormally numerous, not because the broods were bigger, but because a greater proportion of the young survived. The difficulty of distinguishing the cock from the hen makes it practically impossible to test the question whether a like predominance is found among partridges, whose numbers are altogether beyond precedent in the southern counties.
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