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to be caught with the hand or by the dogs than take wing ; but the denseness of the thickets 

 usually proves a good protection to it. It feeds on insects and seeds ; and in many individuals 

 dissected by M. Loche he found the seeds of wild plants, and other vegetable matter, remains of 

 ants, and a few small stones well worn. It nests under a tuft of grass or a bush, the nest being 

 a small depression in the soil, lined with dry grasses, or sometimes without any lining whatever, 

 but always situated in a thicket so thorny and impenetrable that the nest is seldom found. Two 

 broods are usually raised in the season, old females depositing the first clutch of eggs in May, 

 and the second in August, and younger ones in June and September ; and four or five eggs are 

 usually deposited. Both sexes undertake the labour of incubation and of rearing ; but should 

 the female be killed, the male will hatch out the eggs and rear the young. As soon as these 

 latter are able to shift for themselves their parents leave them, and make preparations for rearing 

 a second brood. The young can run as soon as they are hatched, and are carefully tended by 

 their parents, who call them together with a note resembling the syllable crroo several times 

 repeated ; and the young answer by a chirp like the note of the young Quail. 



The Hemipode is not as erratic as the Quail, but is to be met with throughout the year in 

 the locality it has chosen for its abode ; and it is more numerous near the coast than far inland. 

 In spite of its shyness when in a wild state, the present species soon becomes accustomed 

 to captivity ; and Loche gives many details respecting the tameness of some which he kept in 

 confinement. A female deprived of her mate laid a number of eggs, most of which were, I 

 believe, sold to different collectors in Europe ; and Loche states that between the 3rd March and 

 the 15th October this bird laid upwards of fifty eggs. The following year a pair bred there in 

 confinement and reared four young ; but when they had commenced to breed a second time, they 

 were accidentally killed. 



The ordinary note of this bird resembles the syllables crroou, crroou, crroou; but besides 

 this cry, Loche writes, " it utters at daybreak and at sunset a deep mournful note, a most peculiar 

 sound, which can only be compared to a very faint and low reproduction of the cry of the 

 Bittern. When producing this strange sound the bird throws up towards the back the covering 

 of the abdomen, so that it appears to have scarcely any abdomen left; and drawing the head 

 down between its shoulders it utters, without opening its beak, like a ventriloquist, a hollow 

 sound that appears to be far distant. Both sexes utter this sound ; but the male does so more 

 frequently than the female. Many people, especially sportsmen, on hearing it, flatly refused 

 to believe that it was produced by my Hemipodes ; and in order to convince them, I have had 

 the cage with the birds taken to a distant place, where, by watching them carefully, my friends 

 could convince themselves that the sound was really produced by the birds." Some interesting 

 notes respecting the habits of the Hemipode, from the pen of Canon Tristram, were published 

 by Mr. Hewitson, who gave, in the first volume of ' The Ibis ' (pi. ii.), an excellent plate of the 

 eggs of this bird together with some other oological rarities. " Although not rare in the wooded 

 districts of Northern Algeria," Canon Tristram writes, " its nest had until last year eluded the 

 researches of all the French collectors. Various eggs had from time to time come into the hands 

 of the Paris dealers, the produce of birds in captivity ; but these two eggs are, as far as I can 

 ascertain, the very first from a bird in a state of nature. They were taken by Captain Loche, of 

 the French army, in Kobah forest, on July 11th, 1857. The nest contained seven eggs, nearly 



