THE PARTRIDGES. 231 



absorbed in his "spell" as to be utterly oblivious to anything going on 

 around him. 



In America several peculiar forms of grouse are found, the dusky caper- 

 cailzies (Dendragapus) having a naked air-sac on the sides of the neck, which 

 they are able to inflate at will. Mr. Gale describes the nesting habits of 

 D. obscurus in Colorado, and says that the male, during the nesting season, 

 performs some curious evolutions. " If," ho says, "you are anywhere near 

 the haunts of a pair, you will surely hear the male, and most likely see him. 

 He may interview you on foot, strutting along before you, in short, hurried 

 tacks, alternating from right to left, with wide-spread tail tipped forward, 

 head drawn in and back, and wings dragging along the ground, much in the 

 style of a turkey-gobbler. At other times you may hear his mimic thunder 

 overhead again and again in his flight from tree to tree. As you walk along, 

 he leads, and this reconnoitring on his part, if you are not familiar with it, 

 may cause you to suppose that the trees are alive with grouse. He then 

 takes his stand upon a rock, stump, or log, and distends the lower part of his 

 neck, opens his frill of white, edged with the darker feather tips, showing in 

 the centre a pink narrow line, describing somewhat the centre of a circle ; 

 then with very little apparent motion he performs his growling or groaning, I 

 don't know which to call it, which has the strange peculiarity of seeming 

 quite distant when quite near, and near when distant ; in fact, appearing to 

 come from every direction but the true one." The pinnated grouse (Tym- 

 panuchtis) have an elongated tuft of feathers on each side of the neck, as well 

 as an air-sac. These and the ruffed grouse (Bonasa) are also North American, 

 being replaced in Europe and Northern Asia by the hazel-hens (Tetrastes), 

 which inhabit hilly and wooded districts. 



In the family Phasianidce, which includes all the partridges, quails, and 

 pheasants, we meet with the most typical of the Game-Birds. Mr. Ogilvie- 

 Grant proposes to divide them into three sub-families — 

 partridges {PerdicincB), plieasants (Phcisianina), and Odonto- The 



phorinw, or American tooth-billed partridges. The latter Partridges, 

 may be at once distinguished by having the cutting edge of 

 the lower mandible serrated or toothed. The partridges may be recognised 

 by their short and stumpy tails, which never exceed the length of the wing, 

 and there are other minor differences, which the above-mentioned author has 

 pointed out. Unfortunately for the classification of the Game-Birds, many 

 forms are intermediate, while the characters assigned to the partridges hold 

 good only to a certain extent, the character which should separate par- 

 tridges from pheasants, r(,~. the proportion of the primaries and the 

 secondaries, breaks down, as Mr. Ogilvie-Grant has pointed out, in the 

 important genus Fhasiaims, which has the wing of a partridge, but the long 

 tail of a pheasant. Thus the two groups, the partridges and the pheasants, 

 to outward appearance so different, appear to be inseparably connected, and 

 it is difficult to find any line of demarcation between them. Pheasant-like 

 partridges and partridge-like pheasants fill the gap between the true partridges 

 and the true pheasants. 



The snow-partridges of the Himalayas are represented by the genus Lerwa, 

 which has the upper half of the tarsus covered with feathers, indicating an 

 inhabitant of high elevations. Thus we find the genus 

 iertco. only in the upper ranges of the Himalayan system, p J tride-er— 

 from Koteghur to Sikkim, and again in Moupin and the Qg^„„ Lerwa 

 mountains of Szeohuen in Western China. It is found near 



