BIRDS AND CULTIVATION.
Since last year I have seen a large population of partridges clean disappear from a district, This is not due to a bad
year but to change of cultivation, for partridges in the neigh- bourhOod are sufficiently many. Partridges are grain eaters for a good part of the year, though they graze like geese in the winter. I should say that our total of partridges has fallen very nearly in exact ratio with the number of our arable acres, now as low as 1,300,000 acres ; and they much prefer barley or, if that is absent, wheat before oats or rye. This change in the treatment of the land has, I think, begun to restore both the cornerake and the green plover, the two birds that suffered most from early cutting and early rolling. In some parishes the wild pheasants have multiplied at the expense of the partridges. They are as fond of long grass as of trees, and prefer acorns to corn—or mangold-wurzels !
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