will be for sale.'"--H.
C.]

The chief difficulty in identification with the Syrrhaptes or any known
bird, would be "the feet like a parrot's." The feet of the Syrrhaptes are
not indeed like a parrot's, though its awkward, slow, and waddling gait on
the ground, may have suggested the comparison; and though it has very odd
and anomalous feet, a circumstance which the Chinese indicate in another
way by calling the bird (according to Hue) _Lung Kio_, or "Dragon-foot."
[Mr. Rockhill (_Journey_) writes in a note (p. 9): "I, for my part, never
heard any other name than _sha-ch'i_, 'sand-fowl,' given them. This name
is used, however, for a variety of birds, among others the partridge."--H.
C.] The hind-toe is absent, the toes are unseparated, recognisable only by
the broad flat nails, and fitted below with a callous couch, whilst the
whole foot is covered with short dense feathers like hair, and is more
like a quadruped's paw than a bird's foot.

The home of the Syrrhaptes is in the Altai, the Kirghiz Steppes, and the
country round Lake Baikal, though it also visits the North of China in
great flights. "On plains of grass and sandy deserts," says Gould (_Birds
of Great Britain_, Part IV.), "at one season covered with snow, and at
another sun-burnt and parched by drought, it finds a congenial home; in
these inhospitable and little-known regions it breeds, and when necessity
compels it to do so, wings its way ... over incredible distances to obtain
water or food." Hue says, speaking of the bird on the northern frontier of
China: "They generally arrive in great flights from the north, especially
when much snow has fallen, flying with astonishing rapidity, so that the
movement of their wings produces a noise like hail." It is said to be very
delicate eating. The bird owes its place in Gould's _Birds of Great
Britain_ to the fact--strongly illustrative of its being _moult volant_,
as Polo says it is--that it appeared in England in 1859, and since then,
at least up to 1863, continued to arrive annually in pairs or companies in
nearly all parts of our island, from Penzance to Caithness. And Gould
states that it was breeding in the Danish islands. A full account by Mr.
A. Newton of this remarkable immigration is contained in the _Ibis_ for
April, 1864, and many details in _Stevenson's Birds of Norfolk_, I. 376
seqq. There are plates of _Syrrhaptes_ in _Radde's Reisen im Sueden von
Ost-Sibirien_, Bd. II.; in vol. v. of _Temminck_, Pla