266 THE BIRDS OF DEVOX. 



Partridge Mr. R. P. Nicholls has ever met with (Pt. P. X. and E. A. S.E.). 

 A\ e have seen some exposed for sale in the poulterers' shops in Exeter, 

 which were brought from AViltshire as we were informed. One which 

 we saw hanging up on Oct. 3id, 1882, however, was said to have been 

 shot near Okehampton. 



We learn from Mr. Edmund Elliot that Mr. Lucas of Stokeley, near 

 Kingsbridge, h;is recently attempted to introduce this bird on his land, 

 but that none have as yet been sliot. 



This species of Partridge, well-known to and little liked by the sports- 

 men of the Eastern Counties, is never likely to be more than an occasional 

 straggler in the West of England, where the climate is too damp to suit 

 the bird, and we believe all attempts to introduce it as a resident have 

 failed for this reason. We speak with a due warrant for this assertion, 

 as a friend of ours has repeatedly endeavoured to naturalize the lled- 

 legged Partridge on his ground in X. Pembrokeshire, where the climate 

 is similar in its humidity to that of Devonshire, and although he has 

 hatched, and in due course turned loose, fifty or sixty healthy lled-legged 

 Partridges at a time, they were nowhere to be found when the shooting- 

 season arrived, having deserted a country which was not congenial to 

 them. Nor were they met with anywhere else in the district, and we 

 have only in our notes the record of one example of this I'artridge which 

 was ever obtained in Pembrokeshire, one shot by !Mr. Moore, the head 

 keeper at Picton Castle. Many years ago Lord Cawdor attempted to 

 introduce the lied-legged Partridge on his Stackpole estate, and also 

 failed. In Somerset this Partridge is only an occasional visitor ; Mr. Cecil 

 Smith has recorded no instance of its occurrence, but we have heard of 

 several in the eastern portion of the county ; and Mr. llodd states that in 

 September 187U Mr. C. Edwards, of the Grove, Wrington, "shot a brace 

 on the manor of Compton Pishop, in East Somerset, where the keepers 

 informed him tliat others fed in the coverts with the Pheasants " (llodd, 

 ' Eirds of Cornwall,' p. 77). In his own county Mr. llodd says the lled- 

 legged Partridge is unknown. In Dorset Mr. Manscl-Pleydell informs us 

 that all attcmjjts to establish this species as a resident have failed, as in 

 the instances we have mentioned above, and probably from the cause we 

 have assigned. 



The lled-legged Partridge, or " Frenchman," as it is most commonly 

 called, was first introduced into England in 1770. In the first volume of 

 his ' Pirds of Norfolk,' p. 413, Mr. Stevenson has recorded the curious fact 

 that there is now an emigration of this Partridge /rom the Eastern Coun- 

 ties to the Continent every spring, in the month of April, and gives very 

 interesting particulars of this movement on the part of the birds. 



[Ohst7'i'ation. — The Barbary Partridge {Caccabis j^etrosa, Gray) recorded 

 by Mr. llodd as having been shot near Falmouth was, without any doubt, 

 an escape. A lady of our acquaintance kept at that time in Falmouth 

 several tame Barbary Partridges in her aviary, and this we believe to 

 have been one of her birds.] 



