ANIMALS INTRODUCED FOR SAKE OF SPORT 275 



in Scotland as it did throughout the United Kingdom. 

 Several attempts have since been made to re-establish it 

 in Britain, but with uniform failure; the once native bird 

 persistently refuses to adopt again its former home. The 

 secret of the failure lies in this: that while times and con- 

 ditions have changed, they have in no sense changed for 

 the better from those which drove the British Bustard to 

 extinction. It is a bird of the plains which nests in the 

 open and trusts to its keen sight to warn it of danger still 

 afar off, and to its speed of limb to carry it to safety. But 

 the new cultivation and the growth of sheltering plantations,- 

 coverts and hedgerows, afford possible shelter to lurking 

 foes, and here the Bustard cannot dwell and thrive. 



RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE 



Another introduction which has met with little success 

 in Scotland, though it is common over great parts of 

 England and Wales, and has actually defied attempts to 

 exterminate it in East Anglia, is the pretty Red-legged 

 Partridge (Caccabis rufa}, a native of south-western Europe, 

 first brought to England in 1770. It is a bird fond of sand-' 

 dunes, .but somewhat less so of highly cultivated areas, and 

 this may account for the contrast between the success of 

 the English experiments and the comparative failure of the 

 Scottish, although in recent years it appears to have become 

 established in Fifeshire. 



INCIDENTAL GAME-BIRDS 



From Norway the Willow Grouse or Ryper (Lagopus 

 lagopus], near relative of our own Red Grouse, has been 

 introduced into Argyllshire, but so far it has taken no im- 

 portant place in the native fauna. The same is true also of 

 such importations to England as the Virginian Quail or Bob 

 White (Colinus virginianus], the Button-Quail (Turnix 

 sylvaticd] of Southern Europe, and the Barbary Partridge 

 (Caccabis petrosa), but the persistence with which Hungarian 

 Partridges have been turned down in Sussex, where in six 

 successive seasons numbers varying from 50 to 175 brace 

 have been released, may enable this stranger to obtain a firm 

 foothold. 



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