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. [With reference to the large Tibetan partridge found in the Nan-shan Mountains in the meridian of Sha-chau by Prjevalsky, M. E. D. Morgan in a note (P.  R. Geog.  S. ix. 1887, p. 219), writes:  “Megaloperdrix thibetanus.  Its general name in Asia is ullar, a word of Kirghiz or Turkish origin; the Mongols call it hailik, and the Tibetans kung-mo.  There are two other varieties of this bird found in the Himalaya and Altai Mountains, but the habits of life and call-note of all three are the same.”] From the extensive diffusion of the term, which seems to be common to India, Tibet, and Persia (for the latter, see Abbott in J.  R. G. S. XXV. 41), it is likely enough to be of Mongol origin, not improbably Tsokhor, “dappled or pied.” (Kovalevsky, No. 2196, and Strahlenberg’s Vocabulary; see also Ladak, 205; Moorcr. I. 313, 432; Jerdan’s Birds of India, III. 549, 572; Dunlop, Hunting in Himalaya, 178; J.  A. S. B. VI. 774.)

The chakor is mentioned by Baber (p. 282); and also by the Hindi poet Chand (Ras Mala, I. 230, and Ind.  Antiquary, I. 273).  If the latter passage is genuine, it is adverse to my Mongol etymology, as Chand lived before the Mongol era.

The keeping of partridges for the table is alluded to by Chaucer in his portrait of the Franklin, Prologue, Cant.  Tales: 

“It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke, Of alle deyntees that men coud of thinke, After the sondry sesons of the yere, So changed he his mete and his soupere. Full many a fat partrich hadde he in mewe, And many a breme and many a luce in stewe.”

CHAPTER LXI.