144 GAME BIRDS OF INDIA AND ASIA. 



In length this species is about seven inches, with 

 a wing a little over three, and a tail of two inches. 



Mr. Hume discovered this species himself when in 

 Manipur, and obtained nine specimens (all he saw 

 except two which were lost) after immense labour and 

 two days' beating in, an expanse of elephant grass 

 covering broken ground about two miles square. 

 The birds were in two coveys, and those shot were 

 found to have fed upon both seeds and insects. 

 A single bird was shot ten days later in the same 

 district, and there is a specimen in the British 

 Museum said to be from Sikkim. But except for 

 these few specimens, nothing more was known of the 

 Manipur bush-quail till 1899, nearly twenty years 

 after Mr. Hume's discovery of the bird, when Captain 

 H. S. Wood, of the Indian Medical Service, presented 

 one to the Indian museum, and Lieutenant H. H. 

 Turner two others. Captain Wood, who had fomid 

 the species quite common in Manipur, afterwards 

 wrote an interesting note on it in the Asiatic Society's 

 Journal for 1899. He had shot about eighty of these 

 quail, and did not consider them at all uncommon. 

 The native name means " Trap Quail," as the 

 Nagas snare numbers of them in nooses after jungle 

 fires. The birds breed in Manipur, and the egg is 

 large in proportion to the size of the bird, and green- 

 ish in colour with black and brown patches'; unfor- 

 tunately Captain Wood's specimens of them got 

 broken in transit. He found the birds hard to see 

 except after the jungle fires from February to April 

 as they kept to dense cover, and even after a fire 

 their dark colour made them hard to see on the burnt 

 grass ; they were always found close to water. The 

 coveys kept very close when running, and Captain 

 Wood has bagged as many as four at a shot. 



