so that by August there are almost no sick cocks; the hens, on the other hand, have still two very trying months to face, and although, thanks to the abundance of food, probably most of them succeed in struggling through, yet by August they have only just been freed of their more pressing cares and disabilities, and so a very great number are still found to be in very poor condition. The moment the disabilities are removed, however, they begin to recover, and it is this point which has so constantly been overlooked. Sick birds in August are convalescent, and however many there may be, it is not a sign of a new outbreak of disease, but a sign that the past spring infection was a heavy one, though less fatal than it might have been.
At the end of their own specially critical periods, the cocks have at any rate June, July, August, and September in which to pull themselves together by means of good food assisted by good weather; whereas the hens, at the end of their own specially critical period, have August and September. Hence the preponderance of sick-looking hens when the shooting begins, and the widespread, but erroneous, belief in a recrudescence of disease in autumn.
To return to the further consideration of the hen's change of plumage in September, her finest feature is now undoubtedly the clean new growth of bright red, or dark red or even black and white-flecked feathers of September. the breast and abdomen, with their narrow but even blacker markings. The whole of the feathers of this tract have now been shed, but they grow again so quickly that no bare skin is visible save in the middle area of the abdomen quite low down, where, as has been already pointed out, the new growth is of belated feathers coloured as in the spring plumage, and therefore quite different from those around them. There is still, as a rule, no accession of new red feathers on the chin or throat of the healthy September hen, or at the most but a feather or two. But in the sick hen there is still often a sprinkling of the old red feathers of the preceding autumn plumage, very faded, amongst the faded buff and black feathers of the belated spring plumage. On the back of even forward hens there is still a mixture of old and new plumage, and the scapulars are often faded to something like black and white, and are badly frayed at the ends. The wings have now almost completed their moult, but there may still be a primary or two to change, even in very forward birds. The legs and feet are rapidly becoming feathered for the winter, though in backward birds which have been sick they are
