52 THE GREY PARTRIDGE. 



and as far as Dhaka, 13 miles beyond the western debouch of 

 the Khaibar. How far, if at all, it extends beyond this into 

 Afghanistan, is unknown ; the country is probably too elevated 

 and cold for it. It abounds in Southern Beluchistan, and in the 

 warm low-lying plains of Southern Persia, finding its western 

 limit, according to Major St. John, in Laristan, not far beyond 

 the eastern out-let of the Persian Gulf. 



In Mauritius, like the Chinese Francolin and our Common 

 Myna, it appears to have been introduced. 



Dry, WARM tracts, interspersed with scrub or low grass jungle, 

 in the neighbourhood of cultivation, are what it specially 

 affects, and the stunted acacia or wild date thickets or prickly 

 pear hedges, that so often encircle our villages, are favourite 

 haunts. So, too, are the hedges in some parts of the country 

 enclosing every field, the bush-clad banks of nallas and broken 

 ground, and ravines running down to rivers, more or less thinly 

 or thickly studded with low catechu, acacia or other scrub. 



Morning and evening they will be found in the fields or peck- 

 ing about on the highways and byeways, but their homes are 

 In the scrub, or in low thorny trees, in which many of them, in 

 such localities, roost, and on which they may be found perching, 

 at times, at almost any hour of the day. 



But provided the locality be dry and warm and the ground 

 broken, no want of scrub or cultivation, no lack of trees and 

 hedges, seems to banish them. I have shot them in the most 

 desolate spots near the bases of the hills in Sind and on the 

 Mekran Coast, where there were no traces of vegetation at the 

 time, and where, in the best of seasons only, a few straggling 

 tufts of grass and desert plants are to be seen. 



The most noteworthy point about this species is its clear 

 ringing inspiriting call, kd, kd kateetur, kateetur, which sylla- 

 bize it as you will (and every one has his own rendering), once 

 heard, is never to be forgotten. 



In Upper India, these far piercing notes are so inseparably 

 connected with our happy camp life and all its delights, that 

 even in the dismal lanes of Calcutta the cry of a caged bird 

 sends a thrill through one, and one seems to breathe again the 

 pure air of the North-West, heavy with the scent of the mango 

 bloom, and to forget for an instant the squalid surroundings of the 

 fetid metropolis. 



They afford but poor sport, but their call is so mixed up with 

 so many reminiscences of sport, that every sportsman has, I 

 think, some such feeling about it. Tickell says : — - 



" Again, in the morning, when the grass and the thickets are 

 spangled with dew, and the welcome sun drives away the chilling 

 fog of an Indian winter's night, the cheerful sounds are heard 

 all over the awakening country — sounds redolent of old associa- 



