Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^c. 291 



himself having often killed as many as ten to fifteen of these 

 birds in a day in the southern and south-western districts 

 of the island. 



" I myself remember this bird fairly plentiful in the above 

 districts so recently as the year 1880, its favourite haunts 

 being the so-called 'sciarre/ or tracts of uncultivated moor- 

 land, which extend for many miles along the south coast of 

 Sicily, running parallel with it, but lying a little way inland. 

 Here, among the clumps of dwarf broom-palm and other 

 scrub vegetation, one might have been sure of meeting with 

 Turnix sylvatica, and, with a good dog and decent luck, 

 of making a fair bag. A friend of mine, one day when 

 riding over the moorland near Mazzara, rescued one of these 

 birds from the clutches of a Hawk that had just seized it. 

 In those days one might often have seen the Hemipode in a 

 cage hung on the wall of a peasant's cottage. During the 

 last 15 years or so, however, the species has gradually, but 

 steadily been decreasing in numbers, and I have not seen a 

 single specimen in the flesh since the year 1891, when two 

 or three were sent me from Campobello, near Mazzara. 

 Indeed, for the past two years I have been endeavouring to 

 procure another specimen, without success, nor can I hear 

 of any having been obtained during this period anywhere in 

 the island. This leads me to fear that the Hemipode, fol- 

 lowing in the steps of the Francolin, will, unfortunately, ere- 

 long be a thing of the past in Sicily. The reason for this is 

 probably to be looked for in the fact of the greatly diminished 

 area of country adapted to the requirements of this species, 

 much of the former waste land in Sicily having been reclaimed 

 of late years. The want of efficient protective game-laws may 

 perhaps also be partly to blame, although not, I think, to any 

 great extent, for the ' Quaglia tridattile,' or ' Quaglia 

 triugni,' as it is called here, has never been held in great 

 esteem by the Sicilians, either as a bird for the table or as 

 affording much spoit, and has consequently escaped perse- 

 cution on the part of the native gunner and fowler." 



The Seebohm Collection. — The Seebohm collection of birds. 



