234 AVES ORDER GALLIFORMES. 



The male, as might be believed, has a large horse-shoe shaped mark 

 of chestnut on the breast. This is either feebly developed or entirely 



absent in the adult female, which can always be recog- 



Tlie True nised by the barred Aving-coverts, of which the ground 



Partridges. colour is black, with widely set buff cross-bars. Young 



Genus Perdix. birds of both sexes can be told by the pointed, not 



rounded, end to the first primary, while the yellowish horn- 

 colour of the feet is also a distinguishing character. Then comes the curious 

 fact that the young female has a horse-shoe mark on the breast, which is not 

 seen in the immature male. Many ornithologists recognise certain races of 

 the common partridge in Europe, and a small form, supposed to inhabit the 

 higher ground in summer and to descend to the lower ground in winter, is 

 known as Perdix damascena. A still more curious hill race from the 

 mountains of Lorraine, which crops up occasionally in certain parts of 

 England, is the mountain partridge (Perdix montana), a bird almost entirely 

 rufous, with a creamy buff head. It cannot be considered more than a 

 variety of the ordinary partridge, but at first sight would seem to be a 

 perfectly distinct species. 



In Eastern Siberia our common partridge is represented by the bearded 

 partridge (P. daurica), which has tufts of feathers on the throat, forming a 

 kind of " beard. 3 ' In Tibet and Kansu two species of true partridge are 

 encountered, P. hodgsonice and P. sifanica, both of which have sixteen tail 

 feathers, instead of eighteen, as in our common species. 



Passing by several small genera of bush quails (Margaroperdix of Mada- 

 gascar, Perdicula and Microperdix of India), we come to the tree partridges 



(Arboricola) which inhabit the hill ranges of the Himalayas, 



The Tree Assam, and the Burmese provinces, and those of Sumatra, 



Partridges. Java, Borneo, Hainan, and Formosa. This distribution is in- 



Genus teresting as snowing the Himalayan element in the mountain 



Arboricola fauna of the last-named islands. In the lower hills of Burma, 



Malacca, Sumatra, and Borneo occurs the allied genus 

 Tropicoperdix, which contains a couple of species very like those of Arboricola, 

 but distinguished by the absence of the supra-orbital chain of bones, which is 

 one of the features of Arboricola. Closely allied to these tree-partridges are 

 the genera Hcematortyx of Mount Kina Balu, in North-Western Borneo, re- 

 markable for its three-spurred leg and crimson head, and Caloperdix, the 

 latter genus containing three species, inhabiting respectively the mountains 

 of Tenasserim and the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Java, and North-Western 

 Borneo. The crested wood-partridges (Rollulus\ which have a tuft of long 

 hair-like bristles on the middle of the forehead, are represented by a single 

 species (jR. rouloul\ which is found in the Indo-Malayan sub-region from 

 Southern Tenasserim and the Malay Peninsula to the Sunda Islands. It is 

 accompanied in the greater part of its range by the black wood-partridge 

 (Melanoperdix nigra). 



These little birds are only found in the Old World, the common or migra- 

 tory quail (Coturnix coturnix) being found in Europe and Northern Asia in 



summer, and migrating in vast hosts. The numbers which 



The Quails. appear in the winter quarters of the species, in Northern 



Genus Coturnix. Africa, in Egypt, and, above all, in North-Western India, 



are sometimes incredible. Colonel Tickell, in one of his 

 shooting experiences, speaks of them as like locusts in number. In South 

 Africa our European quail is replaced by the Cape quail (Coturnix capensis), 



