passing visit, but that the bird intended to take np its residence here and become one of our avifauna. 
What reception did this stranger from a distant land receive ? No sooner did it arrive worn out 
with fatigue, than numerons guns were levelled for its destruction ; the little flights were hunted to and 
fro until nearly the whole were killed, and the remnant driven we know not whither. What efforts have 
the Acclimatization Society made to avert this.^ At what cross purposes are we playing, when we are 
endeavouring to introduce creatures from the antipodes without the most remote chance of success, 
w'hile we neglect and defeat the spontaneous offer of so interesting a bird as the Sandgrouse ! Let those 
wealthy proprietors wdio have sanctioned this new Society, and given it their support, render as much 
protection to our new friend as will at least give it the chance of establishing itself among us. That our 
seasons would not he too rigorous for it is certain ; for Mr. Swinhoe states that the bird winters on the 
plains between Peking and Tientsin, and that hundreds are captured after a fall of snow, the markets of 
Tientsin, where it is called Sha-chee, or Sand-fowl, being fairly glutted with them. Hue, in his ‘ Travels in 
Tartary,’ wdien speaking of this bird, says: — “This singular creature is called by the Chinese Lotmg-Kio, 
that is. Dragon’s Foot. They generally arrive in great flocks from the north, especially when much snow 
has fallen, flying with astonishing rapidity, so that the movement of their wings produces a noise like a 
shower of hail.” 
The question will very naturally arise. Is our island otherwise adapted to this bird ? In some respects it 
is not ; but there are certain barren tracts and sandy districts near the sea which would afford it a congenial 
home, wdiere it might breed, and whence, like the Dove-cote Pigeon, it might make raids on the corn-fields, 
when a desire for a change of diet prompted it so to do, and by which means its flesh, as an article of diet, 
might be greatly improved ; at present I fear it would not be much esteemed. 
A species of such vast powers of flight, as we know this Sandgrouse to he possessed of, is no bird for the 
aviary, and we may well be surprised that any of the members of the valuable present of many living 
examples, by the Hon. James F. Stuart Wortley, to the Zoological Society should still be living. It is not 
a little amusing to Fear the remarks of some of the visitors respecting these birds. Like the person wdio 
assured me he had seen a Humming-Bird in England, they think they have met with an old friend from 
India or Egypt. Let me assure all such persons, that neither Pallas’s Sandgrouse nor the only other 
known species of the genus, the Syrrhaptes Tibetanus, is ever seen south of the great watershed which 
separates India and Persia from Tartary, and that the birds they have seen are the various species of the genus 
Pterocles, whose feet are differently formed, and whose wings are not so lengthened. The Indian and Egyp- 
tian birds, it is true, hear a general resemblance to each other ; but they are quite distinct. The home, then, 
of the birds which have paid our shores a visit is in the Altai’ and the Kirghis Steppes of Tartary, the country 
around Lake Baikal, and some parts of China. Here, on plains of grass and sandy deserts, at one season 
covered with snow and at another sun-burnt and parched up by drought, the Sandgrouse finds a congenial 
home ; in these inhospitable and little-known regions it breeds, and, when necessity compels it so to do, wings 
its way, like the Bronze-winged Pigeon of the hot plains of Australia, over incredible distances to obtain 
water or food. Its diminutive bill, small head, and little feet, when compared with its lengthened wings and 
the very powerful pectoral muscles, clearly indicate that space is as nothing to it, and that a journey to 
Europe, when once willed, is easily accomplished. 
The walk of the Syrrhaptes is as slow and feeble as its flight is rapid and powerful ; it toddles over the 
ground with a laboured and uncertain step, like a Chinese lady in her boudoir. 
The two sexes, as will be seen by the accompanying Plate, differ considerably in colour. The eggs are 
said to he four in number, but this is doubtful, since Mr. Newton informs me that three is the normal number 
laid by the members of the genus Pterocles, and that three was the number always found in the Instances of 
their deposit on the Danish Islands above alluded to. 
The Plate represents a male, a female, and three eggs, all of the size of nature. 
