COMMON PARTRIDGE. 283 



Ferdix cmerea, Lath.; Macgill. Brit. B. i. p. 218 (1837); 



Dresser, B. Eur. vii. p. 131, pi. 475 (1878); B. O. U. 



List. Brit. B. p. 142 (1883); Saunders, ed. Yarrell's 



Brit. B. iii. p. 105 (1883); Seebohm, Hist. Brit. B. ii. 



p. 452 (1884); Lilford, Col. Fig. Brit. B. part ix. (1888) ; 



Saunders, Man. Brit. B. p. 487 (1889). 

 Perdix perdix, Grant, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxii. p. 185 (1893); 



id. in Allen's Nat. Libr. ix. p. 143 (1895). 



{Plate CXXin.) 



Adult Male. — General colour above brownish-buff (washed 

 with grey in birds from Northern Europe), with narrow, close- 

 set, wavy cross-bars and lines of black ; lesser and median 

 wing-coverts and scapulars blotched on the inner web with- 

 chestnut, and with only buff shaft-stripes (fig. i). Top of the 

 head brown, rest of the head, throat, and neck chestnut ; breast 

 grey, finely mottled with black, below which is a large horse- 

 shoe-shaped chestnut patch ; rest of under-parts whitish ; first 

 flight-feather with extremity rounded; feet horn-grey. Total 

 length, 1 2 "6 inches; wing, 6 '2; tail, 3*5; tarsus, 17. 



Adult Female. — Easily distinguished from the male by having 

 the ground-colour of the lesser and median wing-coverts and 

 scapulars mostly black, with wide-set buff cross-bars, in addition 

 to the longitudinal buff shaft-stripe down the middle of each 

 feather (figs. 2 and 3) ; and the chestnut patch on the breast 

 small, or sometimes absent. 



Immature examples of both sexes exhibit the characteristics of 

 the adult, but may be recognised by having the first primary 

 flight-feather pointed at the extremity instead of being rounded, 

 and the feet yellowish horn-colour. 



The immature female has generally a well-developed chestnut 

 horse-shoe mark on the breast. 



Range. — Europe and Western and Central Asia, extending 

 in the west to Scandinavia and the British Isles, in the east to 

 the Barabinska Steppes and Altai Mountains, and in the south 

 to Northern Spain and Portugal; Naples, the Caucasus, Asia 

 Minor, and North Persia. 



Mr. Ogilvie Grant writes : — "As considerable interest attaches 

 to the sexual differences in plumage in the Common Partridge, 

 it may be worth while to republish here the substance of my 



