Perdix hodgsoniee, Hodgson. 



VemaCTllar Names.— [Sakpha (Tibetan), Tibet. 



HE Tibetan Partridge only just crosses from Chinese 

 Tibet into our territories. 



The first specimen, indeed, ever shot by an Euro- 

 pean was killed by Mr. Wilson in the autumn of 

 1 841, when shooting Chukor in the fields near Sukhi, 

 a village high up in the valley of the Bhagirathi and 

 near the snowy range, in which, a few marches east- 

 wards, Gangotri is situated. But it has never since been met 

 with on the southern side of the first snowy range, though year 

 after year Mr. Wilson hunted for it in this same locality. Subse- 

 quently it has been repeatedly met with on several of the 

 passes leading from the valley of the Indus to the head of the 

 Pangong Lake, and about the lake itself; it has been shot near the 

 Buddhist monastery at Hanle, and near the foot of the Lanak 

 Pass ; and it has been obtained at the extreme north of both 

 Kumaun and British Garhwal. 



Nowhere else has it been observed within our limits. 

 Hodgson, who first discriminated the species, received his type 

 from the Tibetan province of Tsang, immediately to the north 

 of Nepal, and Mr. Mandelli has procured many specimens from 

 that portion of Tibet which lies north of Sikhim. 



Doubtless it extends westwards throughout the high bare 

 inner ranges of the Himalayas and the desolate plateaux they 

 embastion as far, or nearly as far, as the Changchemno valley ; 

 but it does not apparently extend further west here, as it was 

 seen by none of our explorers, Shaw, Henderson, Stoliczka, 

 Scully, Biddulph, who, by a variety of routes, crossed and 

 re-crossed, some of them no less than six times, the mountain 

 masses lying between Ladakh and Yarkand. 



Eastwards and north-eastwards of the Pangong, I do not 

 doubt that it occurs everywhere in suitable localities throughout 

 South-eastern Tibet, extending as far north and east as Kansu, 

 where Prjevalsky (who re-named it sifanica) obtained it. 



