Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/410

388 snow on the ground, they being birds that come originally from a hot climate.

Notwithstanding the awkward splay web-feet (as Mr. White calls them) of the duck genus, some of the foreign species have the power of settling on the boughs of trees apparently with great ease; an instance of which I have seen in the Earl of Ashburnham's menagerie, where the summer duck, anas sponsa, flew up, and settled on the branch of an oak-tree in my presence: but whether any of them roost on trees in the night, we are not informed by any author that I am acquainted with. I suppose not, but that, like the rest of the genus, they sleep on the water, where the birds of this genus are not always perfectly secure, as will appear from the following circumstance which happened in this neighbourhood a few years since, as I was credibly informed. A female fox was found in the morning drowned in the same pond in which were several geese, and it was supposed that in the night the fox swam into the pond to devour the geese, but was attacked by the gander, which being most powerful in its own element, buffeted the fox with its wings about the head till it was drowned.—.

HEN PARTRIDGE. A hen partridge came out of a ditch, and ran along shivering with her wings and crying out as if wounded and unable to get from us. While the dam acted this distress, the boy who attended me saw her brood, that was small and unable to fly, run for shelter into an old fox-earth under the bank. So wonderful a power is instinct.—. It is not uncommon to see an old partridge feign itself wounded and run along on the ground fluttering and crying before either dog or man, to, draw them away from its helpless unfledged young ones. I have seen it often, and once in particular I saw a remarkable instance of the old bird's solicitude to save its brood. As I was hunting a young pointer, the dog ran on a brood of very small partridges: the old bird cried, fluttered, and ran tumbling