COUNTRY LIFE
Trade in Ants
Passengers along certain roads in the Eastern Counties may have wondered at the appearance of two great lorries that were making their way back to the most famous game centre in England. Their floors were carefully covered with sheets, as is the habit when seed clover is carried from place to place. But the freight of the lorries was not in this case seed of any sort. The lorries were wholly loaded with ant- heaps, fetched from a more or less desolate c3tate in a neigh- bouring county. The grubs of the ant are the most precious of foods in the eyes of all who desire their partridges to flourish. Indeed, when partridges are reared in artificial con- ditions it is quite difficult to rear the young at all without a supply of these grubs. Old and young birds exult in the food. In a parish where partridges were very scanty, I once flushed at least a hundred birds from one rough grass field where the farmer had been shaving off his numerous ant-hills. News of the feast had attracted coveys from miles away.
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