COMMON PARTRIDGE. 
283 
Perdix mierea, Lath.; Macgill. Brit. B. i. p. 218 (1837)- 
Dresser, B. Eur. vii. p. 131, pi. 475 (187S); B. O. u’. 
List. Brit. B. p. 142 (1883); Saunders, ed. Yarrell’s 
Brit. B. Ill p. 103 (1883) J Seebohm, Hist. Brit. B. ii. 
p. 452 (1884); Lilford, Col. Fig. Brit. B. part ix. (1888) ; 
Saunders, Man. Brit. B. p. 487 (1889). v ^ > 
Ferdix perdix. Grant, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxii. p. 183 (1803) • 
id. in Allen’s Nat. Libr. ix. p. 143 (1895). ^ ^ ’ 
{Plate CXXin.) 
Adult Male —General colour above brownish-butf (washed 
with grey in birds from Northern Europe), with narrow, close- 
set, wavy cross-bars and lines of black; lesser and median 
wing-coverts and scapulars blotched on the inner web with 
chestnut, and with only buff shaft-stripes (fig. 1). Top of the 
head brown, rest of the head, throat, and neck chestnut; breast 
grey, fmely mottled with black, below which is a large horse- 
shoe-shaped chestnut patch ; rest of under-parts whitish ; first 
flight-feather_ with extremity rounded; feet horn-grey. Total 
length, 12-6 inches; wing, 6-2; tail, 3-5 ; tarsus, 17. 
Adult Female.— Easily distinguished from the male by having 
the ground-colour of the lesser and median wing-coverts and 
scapulars mostly black, with wide-set buff cross-bars, in addition 
to the longitudinal buff shaft-stripe down the middle of each 
feather (figs. 2 and 3); and the chestnut patch on the breast 
small, or sometimes absent. 
Immature examples of both sexes exhibit the characteristics of 
the adult but maybe recognised by having the first primary 
flight-feather pointed at the extremity instead of being rounded 
and the feet yellowish horn-colour. ’ 
The immature female has generally a well-developed chestnut 
horse-shoe mark on ihe breast. 
Range. -Europe and Western and Central Asia, extending 
m the west to Scandinavia and the British Isles, in the east to 
the Barabinska Steppes and Altai Mountains, and in the south 
to Northern Spam and Portugal, Naple.s, the Caucasus, Asia 
Minor, and North Persia. 
Mr. Ogilvie Grant writes :— “As considerable interest attaches 
to the sexual differences in plumage in the Common Partridge, 
It may be worth while to republish here the substance of my 
