RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE. 117 



the adjoining estates, and became very plentiful. The eggs 

 were brought from France, as Professor Newton was told by 

 his father, who refused to have any at the time of their 

 introduction. From this time onwards the Red-legs increased 

 with such rapidity that in 1825 Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear 

 (Trans. Lin. Soc. xv. p. 34) wrote, " These birds are now very 

 plentiful in some parts of Suffolk. We have seen at least 

 one hundred and fifty brace upon Dunmingworth-heath, and 

 they are found in greater or less numbers from Aldborough 

 to Woodbridge." Since then the species has spread into 

 Cambridgeshire, Herts, Essex, Buckinghamshire, and even 

 Middlesex, and has been found occasionally in other counties 

 from Kent to Devonshire, and northwards to Westmoreland, 

 but the Midland and North-eastern districts do not appear to 

 suit it, and the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, where it 

 frequents both the light and the heavy lands, still remain its 

 stronghold. In Scotland a solitary example was obtained 

 near Aberdeen in January, 1867 ;* and an attempt to intro- 

 duce the species into the Orkneys has failed. Neither 

 does it appear to have thriven in Ireland, where, according 

 to Thompson, it was introduced a few years prior to 1844. 



This species was formerly known by the name of the 

 Guernsey Partridge, owing to the belief that it was 

 indigenous to that island; but Mr. Cecil Smith (Zool. 

 1881, p. 397) considers that, even as an introduced species, 

 it is extinct both there and in the neighbouring islets : 

 Jersey, where Mr. Harvie-Brown saw one a few years ago, 

 being the only island on which any still exist. This 

 disposes of the supposition that an example shot many 

 years ago, near Weymouth, in Dorsetshire, had migrated 

 from the Channel Islands ; and, in fact, all the evidence 

 at present available tends to shew that this species is no- 

 where in the habit of taking long migratory flights. Mr. 

 Stevenson, who has gone very carefully into the question,! 

 points out that although small coveys of birds are regularly 

 met with in spring on various points of the east coast, 



* R. Gray, 'Birds of the West of Scotland,' p. 243. 

 t 'Birds of Norfolk,' i. pp. 413-416. 



