58 GAME BIRDS OF INDIA. 



of procuring this bird, it is not well known to -sportsmen in general, 

 even in districts where it is not rare ; and its qualities for 

 the table are inferior to those of the last species, having less 

 flavour and being more dry. Numbers are snared in the hills 

 not far from Madras, and they are generally procurable in the 

 Madras market. I have kept them in confinement for long. 

 They thrive pretty well, but the males are very pugnacious. The 

 males have a fine cackling sort of call, very fowl-like. This Spur- 

 fowl has been introduced into the Zoological Gardens of London, 

 and appears to be thriving well. A figure of it appeared in 

 Wolf's Zoological sketches of Animals and Birds living- in those 

 gardens. 



The only other known species of Spur-fowl, Galloperdix zeylon- 

 ensis, is somewhat allied to the last species, but differs conspi- 

 cuously by the lower parts being mottled black and white, some- 

 what as in the Painted Partridge. It is figured by Gould in Birds 

 of Asia, pt. VI., pi. 2. 



Blyth considers Ptilopachus, an African genus, to approximate 

 Galloperdix, but on geographic considerations I prefer keeping it 

 among the Francolins and Partridges as Gray has done. The 

 Turkeys are sometimes placed as a division of the Phasianidcv, 

 but I think on grounds both of structure, habit, and geographic 

 distribution, that they ought to be kept distinct. Bonaparte, indeed, 

 places them, and the somewhat less isolated Guinea fowls of Africa, 

 as families in one Cohort, Craces, with the Cracidoe; and Gray 

 places both Turkeys and Guinea-fowl in his sub-fam. Meleagrinoe 

 of the Phasianidce. Though I can hardly agree with Bonaparte 

 in associating them with the Curassows from which they differ in 

 so many structural details, yet I agree with him that geographic 

 distribution must be considered in allotting a place in the natural 

 system to any group. 



The Meleagridce or Turkeys, are birds of large size, with the 

 head and neck naked; a fleshy caruncle hangs from the cere, 

 partially erectile, and the throat is furnished with a pendulous 

 carunculated wattle capable of expansion and turgescence, when 

 the bird is excited either by anger or desire ; the tail has eighteen 

 broad feathers, which the male raises erect and spreads, puffing out 



