we may conclude that in Northern Aracan it is equally unknown.
In Pegu and Independent Burma, and further east, it is replaced
by the nearly-allied Eastern or Chinese Francolín.
Throughout the eastern districts enumerated, and throughout
the enormous tract lying north of the imaginary line sketched
above, the Black Partridge is to be found in suitable localities,
and this not only in the plains and lesser chains of hills, but in all
the lower outer ranges of the Himalayas,* and in the river
valleys running far into these, up to elevations, at any rate in
summer, of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet.
Of course they are birds of well watered or more or less
jungly tracts; and in the semi-desert wastesf of Rajputana
they are all but unknown, and almost equally so in the dry
level plains of the Doab and Southern Rohilkhand and Oudh,
except along the valleys of the larger rivers.
Outside our limits, the Francolín occurs in the better-wooded
portions of Southern Beluchistan and in Afghanistan.
The specimen brought from the latter by Hutton was an
extremely pale one, but whether this was abnormal or is
characteristic of a local race is uncertain.]:
" It is found," says Major St. John, " in the warm plains of
Southern Persia and the damp forest regions of the Caspian,
but not very abundantly in the latter. Its northern limit is
about Lankoran. Westwards, it is found in great numbers in
the tamarisk jungles and reed beds of Mesopotamia."
Westwards, again, it still occurs in many places in Asia Minor
and Palestine, and is tolerably abundant in Cyprus.
Formerly it unquestionably inhabited parts of Spain, Sicily,
Sardinia, Tunis, Algiers, and many of the Islands of the Greek
Archipelago ; but civilization has in all these countries been too
much for it, and its sole and last remaining//^ á terre within
nominal European limits is Cyprus, which, for my part, I should
rather include in Asia.
I T IS IN the valleys of our larger rivers, where population is
not very dense, and where high grass and tamarisk (Jhao)
jungle are interspersed with cultivation, that the Black Partridge
will be met with in greatest abundance. In such localities—and
many such exist to this day, despite railways and breechloaders—
fifty brace may still be bagged in a single day by a
occurs, though not very commonly,in Cachar. I have not heard of it in the Naga
Hills. Mi. Cowley tells me it is unknown at Sadiyaand Dibrugarh. In Manipur it
is very abundant.
The Blade Partridge affects well-raised dry ground covered with light grass, and is
in Bengal generally shot from the howdah ; in Manipur very good sport may be had
on foot with dogs 01 beaters. This species is always found in couples and never in
covevs It breeds throughout Bengal.
* At any rate from the Indus to the Teesta, though much rarer in the extreme
north-west. Whether they extend into the Bhutan esc Himalayas I cannot say.
ffg. Almost the whole of Jodhpore, Mulani, Jeysulmere, Bickaneer, &c.
* A precisely naulaj bird has recently been shot in Sind by Mr. Doig.
single sportsman, and in past times 60, 70, and 80 brace have
been thus brought to book.
Near Lalpur and Jewar-Sirsanuh in the Kadar of the Jumna,
close to where the Bulandshahr and Aligarh districts join,
Meyrick of the Canals, Home, later the Hero of the Kashmir
Gate (his bright career too early closed by the fatal explosion
of Malagarh) and myself, in six days bagged 1 7 7 ^ brace, besides
nearly a hundred brace of Quail, Snipe, Ducks of sorts, Cranes,
Sand-Grouse, &c.
In Upper India it is just before the wheat ripens in localities
such as I have indicated, and where the fields are all divided by
broader or narrower belts of lofty grass, that the best sport is
perhaps afforded. You drive with a good line of beaters all the
outlying patches, then beat the belts, and then work the standing
corn slowly and quietly, as you would thick turnips. In
the dense wheat of these Kadar lands, the Black Partridge, never
much of a runner compared to the Grey or the Chakor, cannot
run at all, and will not rise until you arc within easy shot ; and in
a plot of two or three acres you may kill a dozen brace.
Or, again, they offer very pretty sport when shot from an
elephant. Around you is one waving sea of silvery-feathered
grass, in which you only here and there for a moment catch a
glimpse of one of your close line of beaters ; the dogs you
hear from time to time, but never see ; dotted about are tiny
green islands, the tops of tamarisk bushes or little clumps of
these struggling up to the sunlight and fresh air through the
tyrannous, all over-powering grass. Every few paces, now
almost from under your elephant's trunk, now 20, 30, 40 yards
away, right or left, up springs a Partridge, perpendicularly till
he is about a yard above the grass, and then skims away with a
straight strong flight. Here and there a Quail is flushed ; a Parah
(Hog Deer,) as you guess, breaks, and firing by the waving of the
reed, perhaps you arrest his course, possibly, as once happened
to me, to find, liorribite dictn, that you have shot a mighty boar.
Continually Black Buck and Chikara hurtle through the grass ;
at times a Pea-Fowl, or, happy chance, a brood of Pea-Chicks,
flusters up ; but these are all kickshaws, incidental and extrinsic
delicacies, the.real pieces de tesistance being the Francolins, who
go on all the while rising steadily, almost as if by clock-work,
till, weary with the slaughter, you cry " hold—enough !"
Black Partridge are very easy to shoot under these circumstances,
if you are used to howdah-shooting. I have known the
late Col. Congreve to kill six running with ball from a smoothbore
; but some people never can shoot with a gun off an
elephant.
But though they prefer such localities, and the water and lowlying
lands do seem a great attraction to them, numbers may be
found in widely different localities, as, for instance, in the scrub
bush jungle about the bases of the Mewat hills (the northern