756 QUAIL 
transmarine voyages frequently drop exhausted into the sea or on 
any vessel that may be in their way. In old days they were taken 
in England in a net, attracted thereto by means of a Quail-call,—a 
simple instrument,! the use of which is now wholly neglected,—on 
which their notes are easily imitated. 
Five or six other species of the restricted genus Coturnix are 
now recognized; but the subject of the preceding remarks is 
generally admitted to be that intended by the author of the book 
of Exodus (xvi. 13) as having supplied food to the ‘Israelites in 
the wilderness, though a few writers have thought that bird to 
have been a SAND-GrousE. In South Africa and India allied 
species, C. delegorguii and C. coromandelica, the latter known as 
the Rain-Quail, respectively occur, as well as the commoner one, 
which in Australia and Tasmania is wholly replaced by C. pectoralis, 
the Stubble-Quail of the colonists. In New Zealand another 
species, C. nove-zealandix, was formerly very abundant in some 
districts, but is considered to have been nearly if not quite 
extirpated within the last thirty years by bush-fires. Some fifteen 
or perhaps more species of Quails, inhabiting the Indian and 
Australian Regions, have been separated, perhaps unnecessarily, 
to form the genera Syn@cus, Perdicula, Excalphatoria and so forth ; 
but they call for no particular remark. 
America has some forty species of birds which are commonly 
deemed Quails, though by some authors placed in a distinct Family 
or subfamily Odontophoriny.2 The best known is the Virginian 
Quail, or CoLIN, as it is frequently called—that being, according 
to Hernandez, its old Mexican name. It is the Ortyx virginianus 
of modern ornithology, and has a wide distribution in North 
America, in some parts of which it is known as the “ Partridge,” as 
well as by the nickname of ‘“ Bob-White,”® aptly bestowed upon 
it from the call-note of the cock. Many attempts have been made 
to introduce this bird to England (as indeed similar trials have 
been made in the United States with Quails from Europe) ; but, 
though it has been turned out by hundreds, and has been frequently 
known to breed after liberation, its numbers rapidly diminish 
until it wholly disappears. The beautiful tufted Quail of Calli- 
fornia, Lophortyx californicus, has also been tried in Europe without 
success ; but is well established in New Zealand and the Sandwich 
Islands. All these American Quails or Colins seem to have the habit 
of perching on trees, which none of the Old-World forms possess. 
Interesting from many points of view as is the group of Birds 
1 One is figured in Rowley’s Ornithological Miscellany (ii. p. 363). 
2 They form the subject of a monograph in folio by Gould, published 
between 1844 and 1850. 
3 T learn from a kindly critic (duk, 1893, p. 358) that this name has 
lately been adopted as generic. 
