Andalusian Turnix.
Turnix a/ricantis, Desfont. Mém. de l’Acad. des Sri., 1789, p. 500.
sylvaticus, Desf. ibid.
Tetrao gibraltaricus et T. andalusicus, Gmel. edit. Linn. Syst. Nat., tom. i. p. 766.
Turnix andalusica, Bonn. Ency. Méth. Om., part 1.
Perdix gibraltarica et P. andalusica, Lath. Ind. Om., vol. ii. p. 656.
Hemipodius tachydromus et H. Imulatus, Temm. Man. d’Orn., 1815, pp. 314, 315.
= andalusicus, Boie, Isis, 1822, p. 558.
Ortygis andalusica, Keys, et Blas. Wirbelth. Eur., p. 66.
Tumix sylvatica, Desf., Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., 1866, p. 210.
In the warmer portions of the Old World there occurs a group of small birds which have been classed, and
perhaps correctly, with the Gallinace<B\ 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 o r 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 o n e ; they all have short rounded wings, and rise with a loud whirring noise from the
arid and scrubby plains they frequent. The females, which are by far the largest in size, and the finest in
the colouring and distinctness o f their markings, invariably 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-game.
Of this group of birds many species inhabit India, China, the Philippines, Java, and Australia, and some
Africa, one o f which, the bird represented on the opposite Plate, has two or three times been killed in
E ngland; hence arises the necessity for giving it a place iirth e Birds of Great Britain. The circumstances
under which it has a claim to be included in our avifauna are briefly these :—
In the month o f November 1844, Mr. Thomas Goatley, o f Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire, sent a communication
to the ‘ Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ in which he stated that he had lately received
a bird which appeared to he 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 oftPerdiv gibraltaricus. The bird was shot on the Cornwall estate, about three miles from
Chipping Norton, in a field o f 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 o f barley, several small seeds like charlock, and some particles of
gravel, and was very fat. I t was considerably injured by the sh o t; 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 o f which is noted in the ‘ Zoologist ’ for 1845, p. 872, and o f 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. I t remained the solitary example of the occurrence o f 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 o f June, an example which was taken alive at Fartown, near
Huddersfield. This specimen Mr. Beaumont kindly sent up for my inspection accompanied by the following
n o te :—“ The bird was purchased alive by the son o f 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
o f one of the men, and thinking it a novelty gave them sixpence for i t ; the Irishmen regarded it as a
young Partridge.”
Considerable confusion appears to exist respecting this bird in the works o f 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 o f the Garrison of Gibralter, but not upon any part of the Rock itself.
It appears a t 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