INDIAN YELLOW-LEGGED BUTTON-QUAIL 271 



its eastern limit is the Naga Hills ; in Assam begins the range 

 of the large Burmese race of this yellow-legged type. 



There is little to be said about the habits of this bird, which 

 are much like those of the bustard-quail, but it affects drier 

 localities, and does not come quite so much into cultivation on 

 the whole ; moderately high grass is a pretty good place in which 

 to look for it, and it is also found in grassy patches in forest 

 clea-rings. Its flight is feebler and less whirring and noisy than 

 the bustard-quail's, and it goes for even a shorter distance when 

 flushed, dropping so quickly as scarcely to allow time for a shot, 

 and lying so close afterwards that smart dogs may often pick 

 it up. In captivity it shows an even tamer disposition than 

 the blue-legged bird. The first pair the Zoo in London ever 

 had, presented })y Mr. E. W. Harper, were so tame that I have 

 poked my finger through and touched them as they sat at the 

 side of the aviary. This bird lays four eggs, peppered and 

 blotched like those of the bustard-quail, in a domed nest of grass. 



Mr. D. Seth Smith, now Bird Curator at the Zoo, has given, 

 in the Avicultural Magazine for 1902-03, some very interest- 

 ing details of the habits of this species as observed by him in 

 the private aviary he then had. He successfully bred the birds, 

 this being the first instance of any hemipode being bred in 

 Britain; and found out about the seasonal change in the female's 

 collar, and also that she gave any mealworms given her to her 

 mate, thus showing that the moral reversal of the sexes in the 

 hemipodes results in the hen being generous as well as quarrel- 

 some. She did not, however, feed the chicks, and the male did 

 everything for them as well as the sitting, which only lasted 

 twelve days — a remarkably short period, for even a canary takes 

 fourteen. In the aviary, which had a grassed outdoor enclosure, 

 he noticed that the birds did not seem so much at home in the 

 long grass itself as the painted quails, which made little tunnels 

 in it and bolted down them, but preferred sandy spots with 

 grass tufts here and there ; this is rather at variance with Indian 

 experience of it as a grass bird, but Tickell says it is found, 

 in Bengal at any rate, "in open, sandy, bushy places." The 

 young were mottled rather than distinctly striped like the young 

 of the true quails, and were very insectivorous, refusing at first 



