90 Mr, E. Gibson on the Ornitholoyy of [Ibis, 



in the localities referred to. Tlie largest number 1 have 

 encountered in the Riiicones in one day in the old times 

 (187(5) has been five — two pairs and a single bird. The next 

 entry in my journal refers to how a cousin of mine, shooting 

 in the Tapalque district (not far from Azul), had to his own 

 gun in one forenoon, " the day being misty and the scent 

 lying well for his very good dog/' no less than thirty-seven 

 birds. 



1 have occasionally seen nests Avith broken shells, but 

 have never taken a clutch of eggs. A single (and much incu- 

 bated) egg was once brought to me on the 25th of January. 



430. Nothura maculosa Temm. Spotted Tinamou. 



Iris hazel or reddish ; bill, tip and culmen dark brown, 

 almost black ; gape and under mandible whitish ; feet 

 greyish yellow or yellowish l)rown, with occasionally a pink 

 tinge, which disappears after death. 



To my former notes, and Hudson's more fnll account, 1 

 have but little to add. The species is still less abundant 

 locally than when I wrote of it in 1880. And even then I 

 was in a position to judge of its diminishing numbers ; for 

 I have always retained a vivid recollection of an incident 

 about the year 1860, when I was a mere child, of a large 

 trayful of Partridges being sent into our house from the 

 patio, as an attention from one of the Gaucho peones. These 

 had been taken l)y the method then in vogue, in which the 

 horseman, armed with a long slender bamboo at the extremity 

 of which there was a horsehair noose, rode in an ever- 

 narrowing circle round the crouching bird until he was able 

 to drop the noose over its neck. That ingenious — if non- 

 sporting — art has long disappeared in the limbo of the past. 

 Elsewhere, I have known of a piece of fencing-wire being 

 used as a missile by the horseman, and a most large and 

 unrighteous bag made thereby. 



The passing of the giant grasses was bound to affect the 

 status of the Common Partridge all over the pampa. But 

 such episodes as a four-years' drought, which left the plains 

 us bare as a billiard-table, was a supplementary catastrojjhe. 



