46 Dr. E. Coues — Field Notes on Lophortyx gambeli. 



CoLYMBUs TORQUATUs, Bruniiicb. Great Northern Diver. 



A specimen of this Diver, in immature plumage, was sent to 

 me, marked as having been obtained at Fort Stockton, 6th 

 November. 



PoDiCEPS CALiFORNicus (Hecrmann). California Grebe. 



I shot one specimen at Mitchell's Lake, in December 1863. 



PoDiLYMBUs PODicEPS (Liunseus). Pied-bill Grebe. 



Not uncommon near San Antonio in the winter. I observed 

 several on a pond near Matamoras in August 1864, and shot 

 two, one of which I now have in my collection. Another (a 

 young bird) was also sent to me by Colonel M'Cormick, in the 

 collection made by Mr. P. DuflFy at Fort Stockton. 



III. — Field Notes on Lophortyx gambeli. 

 By Elliott Coues, M.D. 



To study the habits of Gambel's Quail we must leave far 

 behind us all the luxuries and comforts of civilized life. A 

 thousand miles beyond the advance-wave of the western tide of 

 civilization we must go, and stop just before meeting the re- 

 ceding under-tow that is now setting back from the Pacific 

 coast of North America towards the Rocky Mountains. Be- 

 tween the two points there is a wild region over which the 

 savage Apache Indian is still master, where the white man only 

 retains his hold by daily-renewed hand-to-hand conflicts. It is 

 a region of which it may be truly said that there is " the very 

 grandeur of desolation." The face of nature is torn, as by 

 Titanic violence, into yawning chasms, rocky canons, and dry, 

 tortuous arroyos, upheaved into stately mountains and gro- 

 tesquely-shaped picachos and precipice-bounded mesas, covered 

 for hundreds of miles with black lava vomited ages ago from 

 extinct and now unrecognizable volcanos. Rivers there are in 

 whose dry sandy beds the ti*aveller may perish from thirst — and 

 vast plains, too, covered with dry crisp grass and sage-brush 

 {Artemisia) and grease-wood {Larrea mexicana), yet almost 

 deserts from this same dearth of water. But it is a country of 

 anomalies and contrasts as well as of wonders. Embosomed in 

 the wildest of mountains are lovely valleys, moist, green, and 

 fertile. Vast forests of noble pines and firs, and immense tracts 



