308 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Fiilano, who sits or lies well hidden hard by. These 

 call-birds are kept in small cages, in which they can 

 barely turn round, and in spite of this close im- 

 prisonment and the idea, which seems to be well 

 founded, that they die if water is given to them, 

 these captives live in their cages for many years, and 

 a good caller is only to be bought at a very high 

 price, and sometimes hired for the day at a rate 

 that usually far exceeds the value of the birds lured 

 by him to their death. Throughout Morocco, Algeria, 

 Tunis, and, we believe, Tripoli, the genus Caccabis is 

 represented by the Barbary Partridge, C. petrosa, a 

 species which is only met with in Europe in the 

 island of Sardinia and on the Rock of Gibraltar, to 

 which latter locality it has been imported from the 

 opposite coast of Africa. This bird has been admitted 

 by some authors into the British list on the strength 

 of a few occurrences in various parts of England, of 

 which particulars will be found at pp. 121, 122 of 

 tlie fourth edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds,' with 

 the reasons for its present exclusion from the said list. 

 Another species of this division, C. saxatilis, known 

 as the Greek Partridge, is found in many of the 

 mountainous districts of France, Switzerland, Austria, 

 Italy, European Turkey, the Ionian Islands, and 

 Sicily, in which island it is the only indigenous 

 Partridge, whilst in the ^gean archipelago, Cyprus, 

 and Asia Minor a fourth species, C. chukar, is the 

 representative bird. We consider Spain as the 

 headquarters of the present species, C. rufa ; it 

 is also found in most parts of France, and locally 

 throughout Northern and Central Italy and the 

 Italian Islands, with the exceptions of Sardinia and 

 Sicily, as above stated. We have pursued and shot 



