THE PAINTED PARTRIDGE OR SOUTHERN FRANCOLIN. 21 



no confirmation of this. Mr. Davidson, C.S., tells me that during 

 a residence of nine months at Tumkur, only 50 miles north- 

 west of Bangalore, he neither saw nor heard it. Captain T. M. 

 Ward says : (i It is strange that the bird should be almost un- 

 known in Mysore, but such is the fact. I myself was for years 

 in the Mysore Territory, two years in and near Bangalore, and 

 three in Shimoga, and I never met it. I am quite confident that 

 there was not a single specimen in any part of the country of 

 which I did the survey, and I well remember being told by Major 

 J. W. M. Anderson, than whom no more observant sportsman 

 could be named, that he had only come across the Painted Par- 

 tridge once in any part of Mysore, and then only in small 

 numbers. I think, but I am not quite sure, that he said that 

 this was in the north-west corner of Mysore, just beyond the 

 Banvasi of Sirsi." 



South of Mysore, however, it re-appears in the northern and 

 central portions of the Coimbatore district, and this appears to 

 be the southernmost portion of its range. 



Mr. A. G. Theobald writes : " I have not seen this species 

 further south than latitude n°55" north, about the jungles called 

 Nuddacovil between Collegal and Bhavani in Northern Coim- 

 batore. I have never heard the call of the bird in South 

 Coimbatore, Malabar, Tinnevelly or Madura, or south of Salem, 

 although I have been all over these. It can be heard in several 

 parts of the jungle of the Collegal Taluk." 



This species is purely Indian, and occurs nowhere outside our 

 limits. 



The Painted Partridge, though clearly the southern represen- 

 tative of the Black, the female of which moreover it closely 

 resembles, differs from it a good deal in habits, being much 

 less addicted to the high grass and tamarisk jungle of low- 

 lying damp lands, and being far more arboreal in its habits. 



It abounds in the dry fields of the Deccan, far away from 

 any forest or jungle, and especially in fields about which trees 

 are dotted, along nallas densely fringed with acacia trees, in dry 

 uplands covered with scrub jungle, and generally broken hilly 

 ground, where bushes and trees are plentiful. The Beerhs, or 

 grass and tree preserves, in the Bombay Presidency are favourite 

 haunts. Black Partridges may be found further north in similar 

 situations, but their favourite resorts are damper, lower-lying, 

 and more jungly tracts, where, so far as my experience extends, 

 the Southern Francolin would scarcely be met with. 



The Black Partridge roosts on the ground, and but rarely 

 perches on trees. The Painted Partridge often, if not generally, 

 roosts on bushes and trees, whence I have shot them after dusk, 

 and have disturbed them before dawn. In the mornings and 

 evenings the cocks, at any rate, may, always in some districts, be 

 seen perched on trees ; and though attention is less often drawn 



