4. The colour of the pendants varies in the texts. Pauthier's and the G.
Text have red and black; the Lat. S. G. black only, the Crusca black
and white, Ramusio feathers red and blue (not pendants). The red and
black may have slipt in from the preceding description. I incline to
believe it to be the Demoiselle, Anthropoides Virgo, which is frequently
seen as far north as Lake Baikal. It has a tuft of pure white from the
eye, and a beautiful black pendent ruff or collar; the general plumage
purplish-grey.
5. Certainly the Indian Saras (vulgo Cyrus), or Grus antigone, which
answers in colours and grows to 52 inches high.
NOTE 5. - Cator occurs only in the G. Text and the Crusca, in the latter
with the interpolated explanation "cioe contornici" (i.e. quails),
whilst the S. G. Latin has coturnices only. I suspect this impression
has assisted to corrupt the text, and that it was originally written or
dictated ciacor or cacor, viz. chakor, a term applied in the East to
more than one kind of "Great Partridge." Its most common application in
India is to the Himalayan red-legged partridge, much resembling on a
somewhat larger scale the bird so called in Europe. It is the "Francolin"
of Moorcroft's Travels, and the Caccabis Chukor of Gray. According to
Cunningham the name is applied in Ladak to the bird sometimes called the
Snow-pheasant, Jerdan's Snow-cock, Tetraogallus himalayensis of Gray.
And it must be the latter which Moorcroft speaks of as "the gigantic
Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on
the edge of the snow;... one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs."; described
by Vigne as "a partridge as large as a hen-turkey"; the original perhaps
of that partridge "larger than a vulture" which formed one of the presents
from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar.
