132 LEWIS'S AMERICAN SPORTSMAN. 



Cave, four of which were of a most beautiful clear >vhite color, 

 three were pied, and that they were preserved alive for a long time 

 as great curiosities. We have heard of several being shot in the 

 State of Delaware, one of which remarkable birds is mounted and 

 in the possession of the author. It is not purely white, but pied, 

 and differs in no other respect from the common partridge. There 

 is also another handsome specimen in the possession of David 

 Gratz, Esq., which most of our shooting friends, no doubt, have 

 seen. There is also a very handsome specimen in the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences. 



There are several specimens of these singular birds in the 

 English Museum ; and Buffon states that ten or twelve partridges, 

 entirely white, have been seen at once among others of the usual 

 plumage, and that they had the pupils of the eyes red, as common 

 to the white hare, rat, ferret, &c. 



What this alteration in the plumage of birds is to be attributed 

 to we are at a loss to discern, as it has occurred in climates that 

 could not be suspected of exercising any influence towards this 

 change. Such anomalies, however, are not so very rare in the 

 feathered race as we should at first be led to suppose ; for it is no 

 very uncommon circumstance to hear of crows, as well as black- 

 birds, having changed their lustrous jetty plumage for one of 

 snowy white. We have also seen a white snipe, and a yellow reed- 

 bird, both of which will be spoken of under their proper head. 



Since the publication of the first edition of our book, we have 

 received at the hands of our friend, the late Mr. H. H. Stockton, 

 who, by-the-by, was a most zealous and experienced sportsman, a 

 remarkable, and, no doubt, perfectly unique, specimen of the Ame- 

 rican partridge. The plumage of this rara avis in terra is totally 

 different from any thing that we have yet seen or heard of. Inde- 

 pendent of the color of the plumage, the bird has every charac- 

 teristic of the Perdix Virginianus, and, no doubt, is a veritable 

 partridge, without any admixture of foreign blood, as some of our 

 sporting friends would have us infer. If this bird had not been 

 shot in the section of country where it was, and in company with 



