66 THE TIBETAN PARTRIDGE. 



Only ON ONE occasion, and then on the desolate steeps of one 

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

 head of the Pangong Lake, have I ever seen this handsome 

 Partridge alive. 



This was in June, at an elevation of perhaps 17,000 feet, 

 and not very far below the then snow line. 



The birds were in pairs, apparently far from wild, but 

 absolutely invisible when amongst the bare stones and rocks, 

 and I should certainly have passed them unnoticed, but for 

 their vociferous calls, which seemed to me so like those of our 

 English bird, that I took some trouble in searching the neigh- 

 bourhood with the dogs. I put up several pairs, and shot three 

 or four. I noticed that when flushed they only flew a short 

 distance, and that their whirring rise and flight were precisely 

 that of the European bird and very different from that of the 

 Chukor. 



The entire aspect of the hill side where these birds were 

 found was dreary and desolate to a degree — no grass, no bushes, 

 only here and there, fed by the melting snow above, little 

 patches and streaks of mossy herbage, on which, I suppose, the 

 birds must have been feeding. But, alas for the depravity of 

 uneducated human nature, I never took the trouble to measure 

 them or ascertain what they had fed on, content, in my igno- 

 rance, that a few days later they fed me, and proved excellent 

 eating. 



The vertical range in the Himalayas is probably from 12,000 

 to 19,000 feet, according to season and the local height of the 

 snow line, but further north they descend to somewhat lower 

 levels, and seem to affect less inhospitable tracts. 



Prjevalsky says : — 



" We found this bird in the alpine regions of Kansu (it does 

 not extend further northwards), principally in the rhododendron 

 thickets about the sources of the Tutunga, where the mountains 

 are covered with small tufts of Potentilla tenuifolia. It descends 

 to the plains, which, however, are not at a lower elevation than 

 10,000 feet above the sea level. 



" Its habits are very similar to those of Perdix barbata, only 

 the voice is different. When taking to wing, it utters a more 

 squeaking but louder note than this latter, and its call-note is 

 also harsher." 



I have never heard the note of P. barbata ; but this is little 

 more than a variety of our English bird, and I should say that, 

 though it may sound louder amid the stillness of the high 

 mountains, the note of the present species is very similar to 

 that of P. cinerea. 



Lieut. W. J. Smith, then of the 75th, quoted by Gould, says, 

 that he procured his specimen, a male, which Gould figures (B. of 

 As. P. IX., pi. 2) near the Pangong lake:— "I found it with its 

 covey of young ones, which were just out of the shells. Some 



