TURNIX AFRICANUS, 
Andalusian Turnix. 
Ttirnix afrieanus, Desfont. Mem. de I’Acacl. des Sci., 1789, p. 500. 
sylvaticus, Desf. ibid. 
Tetrao gihraltaricus et T. andalusicus, Gmel. edit. Linn. Syst. Nat., tom. i. p. 766. 
Turnix andalusica, Bonn. Ency. Meth. Orn., part 1. 
Perdix gibraltarica et P. andalusica, Lath. Ind. Orn., vol. ii. p. 656. 
Hemipodius tachydromus et H. lumdatus, Temm. Man. d’Orn., 1815, pp. 314, 315. 
andalusicus, Boie, Isis, 1822, p. 558. 
Ortygis andalusica. Keys, et Bias. Wirbelth. Eui'., p. 66. 
Turnix sylvatica, Desf., Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., 1866, p. 210. 
In the wanher portions of the Old World there occurs a group of small birds which have been classed, and 
perhaps correctly, with the Gallinacece ; in size they resemble the Quails ; some of the species are a little 
larger than those birds, and others much smaller. They are all solitary in their habits, and never go in 
covies or bevies ; some have stout rather heavy bills, while in others this organ is slender and longer than 
in any other Gallinaceous birds of the same size. These, the Turnices or Hemipodes, have, as the latter 
name implies, but three toes, while, as is well known, the Quails, Partridges, &c. have a fourth generally 
well-developed hind one; they all have short rounded wings, and rise with a loud whirring noise from the 
arid and scruhhy plains they frequent. The females, which are by far the largest in size, and the finest in 
the colouring and distinctness of their markings, Invariahly lay four eggs in a slight depression of the ground, 
with little or no nest. Their flesh is dry and not very good for the table, although they are often pocketed by 
sportsmen and taken home as bush-gaiue. 
Of this group of birds many species inhabit India, China, the Philippines, Java, and Australia, and some 
Africa, one of which, the bird represented on the opposite Plate, has two or three times been killed in 
England; hence arises the necessity for giving it a place in the Birds of Great Britain. The circumstances 
under which it has a claim to he included in our avifauna are briefly these 
In the month of November 1844, Mr. Thomas Goatley, of Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire, sent a com- 
munication to the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ in which he stated that he had lately received 
a bird which appeared to be new to this country, — a Quail having no hind toe, and not mentioned, he believed, 
in any work on British ornithology to which he had access, but which appeared to agree with Latham’s 
description of Perdix gihraltaricus. The bird was shot on the Cornwall estate, about three miles from 
Chipping Norton, in a field of barley, on the 29th of the previous October, after which date another was 
killed near the same spot by the same person ; but its head was shot off, and it was otherwise so mutilated 
as to be unfit for preservation. This might probably have completed the pair, the former being a male. It 
had in its gizzard two or three husks of barley, several small seeds like charlock, and some particles of 
gravel, and was very fat. It was considerably injured by the shot; but Mr. Goatley had it set up, and justly 
considered it as a valuable addition to his small collection of British birds. The above is the specimen the 
occurrence of which is noted in the ‘ Zoologist ’ for 1845, p. 872, and of which a woodcut is given at page 
989 of the same volume ; it was also the subject of the article “ Andalusian Hemipode,” in the supplement 
to Mr. Yarrell’s ‘ History of British Birds,’ p. 43. It remained the solitary example of the occurrence of the 
bird in our islands until the year 1865, when Alfred Beaumont, Esq., exhibited, at the Meeting of the 
Huddersfield Naturalists’ Society held on the 21st of June, an example wdiich was taken alive at Fartown, near 
Huddersfield. This specimen Mr. Beaumont kindly sent up for my inspection accompanied by the following 
note : — “ The bird was purchased alive by the son of S. D. Mosley, a birdstuffer of Huddersfield, from two 
Irishmen on the 7th of April, 1865, near the Fartown bar on the Bradford Road. He saw it in the hand 
of one of the men, and thinking it a novelty gave them si.xpence for it ; the Irishmen regarded it as a 
young Partridge.” 
Considerable confusion appears to exist respecting this bird in the works of the earlier writers, by whom 
it was characterized as two distinct species ; this is now known to be an error, since only one bird of 
this form is found in Europe and on the opposite coast of Barbary. According to Latham, “ it occurs in 
considerable numbers in all the environs of the Garrison of Gibralter, but not upon any part of the Rock itself. 
It appears at the same time as the Common Quail, and continues there throughout the winter and spring, but 
about the breeding-time disappears for the summer ; yet there is no reason to suppose that it quits the 
