Weather and Population One may prophesy from the weather the
welfare of certain animals - Wet weather in spring alvimys increases the number of rats- and- reduces the 'number of insects. June and -July thunderstorms are recognised as the cardinal enemy of the partridge where the birds nest in -grasi.- I have had- some pitiable evidence this July. Young partridge after young partridge has been picked up dead ; -and in one' set of farms at any rate all these little victims were killed by wet if not &reedy diOwned. You could see how the 'long wet grasses, half _" laid " by the storms, had obstructed the passage of the young birds ; and the wet feathers did the rest. In nearly all districts, where partridges- flourish year in year out, there is alternation of surface : arable and grass and common closely juxtaposed ; land that is so covered is generally light. The French partridge can endure wet much better than the English ; 'and it is perhaps for this reason that it flourishes almost exclusively on some of the market-garden land of the Eastern Midlands. It is a bird to be encouraged, not as keepers used to think to be eliminated as an enemy to the English species. It is. in fact the less pugnacious of the two.
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