17° THE INDIAN BUSTARD-QUAIL. 



This species occurs in many parts of Ceylon,* in Travancore, 

 throughout the Madras Presidency, in Mysore, Coorg, the 

 Nizam's Territories, throughout the Bombay Presidency Proper, 

 including Khandesh, Guzefat, Cutch and the country immediately 

 round about Cutch (but excluding Kathiawar, Sind and Jodh- 

 pore, whence I have seen no Quails of this type), the Central 

 Provinces, Chota Nagpore and the Sonthal Pergunnahs, the 

 Central India Agency, Eastern Rajputana, the North-Western 

 Provinces, Oudh, and Behar (excluding the Sub-Himalayan 

 tracts of these), and some part, at any rate, of the Punjab, Cis- 

 Sutlej. I have no knowdedge of its occurrence elsewhere in the 

 Punjab. I have never seen a specimen of the Indo-Malayan 

 Bustard-Quail from any one of the Provinces or States above 

 enumerated. 



This enumeration would indicate a well-defined and easily- 

 explicable range. Formerly (S. F., VI., 451) I assigned to this 

 species three rather reddish specimens from Cachar and Thyet- 

 myo respectively, but having now a much larger series, I find 

 that, even in the south of the Malay Peninsula, about one in 

 twenty or thirty specimens (always somewhat immature 

 examples, like the three above referred to) are somewhat redder 

 on the upper surface than the rest, though not nearly so red as 

 the true taigoor ; and I have no doubt now, having other typical 

 examples of plumbipes from both Cachar and Thyetmyo, that 

 these three specimens, which are precisely like two or three 

 others from the Malay Peninsula, are, like these latter, somewhat 

 abnormal examples of the Indo-Malayan bird, which thus 

 occasionally, when immature, shows a tendency to reproduce 

 what was probably the colouring of the common ancestral form. 



So far as is known this race or species occurs nowhere out- 

 side our limits. 



The Indian Bustard-Quail is a plains species, affecting often, 

 indeed, jungly and broken ground, but never, so far as I can 

 ascertain, ascending the higher hills, such as the Nilgiris, 

 Pulneys, &c, to elevations exceeding two thousand feet. 



It is, on the whole, and speaking broadly, a bird of regions of 

 moderate rainfall, while the next species rather belongs to the 

 heavy rainfall tracts. 



Scrub jungle f, intermixed with patches of moderately high 

 grass on dry ground, is perhaps its natural home ; but it may be 



* Blyth remarks {Ibis, 1867, p. 309) :— 



" It appears that there are two varieties in Ceylon, one abundant throughout the 

 flat northern-half of the island, which agrees with that of India generally ; the 

 other, with a more deeply cinnamon coloured abdominal region, which is as com- 

 mon in the south, and perhaps may be met with in the mountainous parts of South 

 India." 



All my specimens are from Kandy and Colombo, and I have seen nothing of thi3 

 second variety, though we have specimens from other parts of India in which the 

 colour of the abdominal region is deeper than usual. 



f Mr. Davidson writes : — 



