ZOOLOGY, ETC. DIE 
ANTROSTOMUS CAROLINENSTS. 
BY R. MATTHEWS, WICHITA. 
Read December 29, 1898. 
Sunday, June 12, 1898, I was in the woods along the Arkansas river, three 
miles south of Wichita. <A bird flew from the ground in dense underbrush, and 
I recognized it asa whippoorwill. The first impulse was to shoot it; but instantly 
recognizing by its actions that it had eggs or young, I set myself to find the nest. 
- I did not succeed in finding it. I went away and returned in an hour, still find- 
ing the bird in the same locality. I made another unsuccessful search for the 
nest, and left again. 
In a couple of hours I came back again, and approaching with great caution, 
I was delighted to see the bird rise from the identical spot again. This time I 
searched diligently, but without success. So, as I could not return again, I shot 
the bird, took it home, skinned and stuffed with cotton, and tried to identify by 
Goss’s ‘‘ Birds of Kansas.’? The bird would not identify, but by an inference 
seemed to be Antrostomus carolinensis. 
IT afterward proved this to be the case by Coues’s ‘‘ Key to the Birds of North 
America.’’ When I was satisfied I sent the skin to Professor Snow for his opin- 
ion, and received thisfrom him: . . . ‘* You are correct as to the identity. 
It is not recorded that it has been taken in Kansas before.’’ 
Unfortunately the cat tore this specimen to pieces so it could not be mounted. 
There were left the upper half of the head, both wings, one leg and one foot en- 
tire, and a few tail and other feathers. These I sent to Professor Snow. 
WERE QUAILS NATIVE TO KANSAS? 
BY J. R. MEAD, WICHITA. 
Read before the Academy December 30, 1898. 
Bob-white, Colinus virginianus ; Texas bob-white, Colinus virginianus 
texanus. 
In Colonel Goss’s ‘‘ Birds of Kansas,”’ page 222, he says: 
‘“‘T have been informed by military men and hunters that bob-whites were 
occasionally seen on the Cimarron river, south of Fort Dodge, from 1862 to 1866. 
This was long before our birds, in following up the settlements, had reached the 
central portion of the state, and it is safe to conclude that the birds found there 
were of this variety.”’ 
‘This southwestern race, as a bird of western Kansas, rests on two specimens 
in the United States National Museum, collected May 27, 1864, by Dr. Elliott 
Coues, on the Republican river, in the northwestern part of the state.” 
It would be presumption in me to correct so eminent an authority as Colonel 
Goss, our lamented friend and brother. Perhaps my opportunities of observa- 
tion in some instances were better than his. 
I went upon the plains of western Kansas in 1859, and lived along with nature 
as it came from the hand of the Creator for ten years; and among other things 
I found quail, ‘‘ bob-whites,’’ the same as I had killed in hundreds in lowa and 
Illinois, but smaller, along the timbered streams where thickets afforded protec- 
tion. They were not numerous; a covey here and there. Half a dozen coveys 
might be seen in a day’s tramp along the Saline or Smoky Hill or their branches. 
