Fox and Partridge
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.
