108 WILD I.II-K IN CHINA. 



officialdom is any criterion, it will meet with the readiest 

 welcome, and be responded to in the most effective fashion. 



The comparison of the Bob White with our local bamboo 

 partridge introduces us at once to that most interesting 

 member of the Chinese fauna. BcJiuhiisicola Thoracica, as 

 he is called, is, indeed, quite as interesting to us as his second 

 cousin, Perdix cinerea, is to friends in England. Perhaps 

 more so, for it is part of our nature to value anything in 

 proportion to the difficulty of its attainment. Now you may 

 walk stubbles in England — if indeed the modern machines 

 leave any — or better still, turnip fields, and with the aid of a 

 pointer or two may put up as man}'' coveys as the land may 

 contain. It is not so with the bamboo partridge. Personally 

 I have never, not even once, flushed one of them except out 

 of thick cover. They doubtless do feed in the open, or near 

 it at times, but I cannot say when. Once flushed, they are 

 not difficult to hit though the flight is fairly rapid, and they 

 have a trick of getting up, as quail will do, in little bunches 

 close to your feet. Once down again, however, they will not 

 rise a second time unless very closely pressed. I have 

 thought at times when watching our larger breeds of sporting 

 dogs trying to find them in cover which hardly a terrier could 

 get through, that the ideal dog for that work would be a 

 carefully bred cross between foreign and native dogs, 

 provided the resultant progeny possessed the foreign nose 

 and intelligence in the native bod3\ The cry of the bamboo 

 partridge is, as Pere David puts it, "une longue serie de 

 notes percantes et dift'ere totalementde celui de nos perdrix.'' 



I have mentioned the bamboo partridge as a local bird, 

 but that must be taken, by men resident in Shanghai, not to 

 mean the immediate neighbourhood of that citj', but of the 

 province as a whole, and of Central China generally. I have 

 never seen one within 50 miles of the Settlement. Air. Cornish, 

 of the Kiangnan Arsenal, and a friend of his a few years ago 

 introduced some bamboo partridges at a point not more 

 than a score or so of miles from us, where descendants of 

 them have since been seen by friends of my own. The exact 

 latitude and longitude of that spot however, is only to be 

 revealed in good time by the "longue serie de notes percantes" 

 of Baiuhiisicola thoracica himself! 



One of the commonest of the partridge family to be found 

 in China is Perdix chitkar, or Caccabis c/iiikar, which by some 

 ornithologists is likewise described by the tell-tale word, 

 "pii^nax.'' This variety is extremely plentiful in the N. W. 

 provinces and in Mongolia. Another kind of the bamboo 

 variety is well-known in the provinces west and south. This 

 \s Bambiisicola Fyfchii. Baiuhiisicola so/zor/ro.v. belongs to 

 Formosa. Thenearestapproachto the English bird is Perdix 



