954 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol XXV III. 
Cheesman found a brood hatched out at Amara on May 28th. A nesb of 
eggs is reported from Basra on June 1st, and a covey strong on the wing at the 
end of June at Kut, while a clutch of 6 eggs just hatching was found there on 
June 23rd. These discrepancies in dates of laying are doubtless due to acci- 
dents to first nests. The eggs vary much in colour ; Gumming records four 
types — plain olive, dark olive, bluish olive and dark stone and the gives as 
measurements 1’6— 2'Ox 1 •2—1 ‘35 inches (or in millimetres 40‘5 — 50‘5x30'5 — 
34’3). The nest is a mere hollow in the ground and is placed usually in scrub 
and near water. The young are easily hand reared on flies, grasshoppers and 
grain. 
The male starts calling early in March and calls up to July, a few do so in August 
and odd ones even in November, but as a rule it does not call in winter. Watts 
and Magrath, who both know the Indian bird well, considered that the call of 
the Mesopotamian bird was different ; Ludlow and .Thornhill both told me 
that the call had an extra syllable. The chicks make a noise like the chirrup of 
a cricket. 
When Baghdad was first occupied this Partridge was common there but it 
rapidly became rare, and it was only a beneficent army order which saved it 
here and in other places from very serious diminution, a close season being insti- 
tuted from March 15th to September 1st. They chiefly feed in the morning and 
evening, in the heat of the day they lie up in thick cover ; where scrub is not 
available they may be found in the thick reeds along irrigation canals. From 
one bird shot at Beled 284 grains of barley were taken, but there is also a balance 
on the other side as Buxton found the crop of another bird crammed with the 
harmful locust Decticus albifrons, and probabl}' the good they do outweighs the 
harm. 
Nineteen spe6imens obtained : X Kut, 9-8-18 ; Amara, 28-5-18, 13-7-18, 
17-1-18, 3-4-18, 4-11-17 ?. 26-10-17, 20-10-17, 31-10-18 (P. A. B.) ; $ , Qalet 
Saleh, 25-11-17: (two) 9 . Kumait, 28-2-18; 9 • Amara, 25-12-17, 25-9-17 (P. Z. C. 
and R. E. C.) ; d, Kut, 11-16 (Perreau) ; d, Kut (Robinson); Basra 
20-11-.17; cf, 21-11-17. (two) (C. B. T.) 
Besides these I have seen also in the British Museum three more males and 
four females (including three from Arabistan), making in all a fine series of 14 
males and 12 females. Mr. Kinnear and. I had a very large series of the typical 
form, of Beluchi, Sind and N. W. Indian birds for comparison. The birds from 
Arabistan are quite the same as those from the Mesopotamian plains ; they cer- 
tainly do not belong to the tjq>ical form, which is a darker bird, and they match 
in coloration exactly the Sind race henrici but are larger.. The wings of the 14 
males measure 163-178 mm., and of 12 females 154-168 mm. ; the Sind race does 
not even overlap these measurements. 
As a rule, but not quite invariably, the rump and upper tail coverts in the Meso- 
potamian birds are tinged with rust, occasional Sind birds shew this and occasional 
Mesopotamian birds do not. In all the races we examined, the white chin and 
moustache, a character some have relied on, was found to be very variable in 
occurrence ; it is a purely individual character. Also, the white check patch is 
very variable in all of these five races, both in shape and size, partly perhaps due 
to make of skin, but in vulgaris and arabistanicus the patch is usually more or 
less ticked with black, which in Sind and Beluchi birds is seldom the case. 
Another character in races of Black Partridge which has been relied on is the 
amount of white spotting on the under parts of the male, this is purely indivi- 
dual in all races examined and the apparent amount is often influenced by the 
make of the skin. 
The young in down of this race are desiderata, also half grown birds ; it is inter- 
esting to note that a feathered chick from Fao is so pale compared with a similar 
one from Nepal (melanonotus, the darkest race of all) that one would hardly 
guess they belonged to the same species. 
