THE VIRGINIAN ORTYX. 219 



pheasant, the turkey, and so many more valuable animals 

 that to enumerate them would be tedious. However, I be- 

 lieve that there are quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, still 

 strangers to England, that require only to be known to be 

 appreciated ; and by placing their merits before the public, 

 some one may be found sufficiently patriotic to make the 

 attempt to naturalize them. 



Without more preamble, and to come at once to the 

 point, let me say that in my humble opinion there is no 

 bird more worthy of attention, and more deserving of the 

 honor of introduction to any land, than the American ortyx. 

 Its numerous good qualities, together with its description, 

 I will to the best of my knowledge give, hoping it may be 

 the means of our yet seeing this little beauty ornamenting 

 European fields, and adding brilliancy and variety to the 

 game-bags of its numerous enthusiastic sportsmen. The 

 American ortyx varies in weight from eight to ten ounces, 

 is erect in his walk, very handsome in plumage, strong 

 upon the wing, feeds principally upon grain, grass-seed, and 

 ants, frequents indifferently brush, timber, or open coun- 

 try, is capable of standing cold, is not quarrelsome with 

 other game, arid is very prolific, frequently hatching two 

 broods in a season. Moreover, an advantage which can 

 not be too highly estimated, is that it never gets so wild as 

 to rise so far from your dogs as to be out of gun-shot, a 

 nuisance that all are so well aware of in our home-bred 

 bird toward the end of the season. In fact, who that shoots 

 regularly can not remember instances of our partridge dis- 

 appearing over the far side of a field as soon as the sports- 

 man had entered it? Now, in years of experience in 

 America, I never saw an instance of this kind ; up to the 

 commencement of the close season they would remain al- 

 most as tame as they were at the termination of the pre- 

 vious one. A reason for this may be that they seldom 



