THE PARTRIDGES. 27 



oring to attract attention away from them 1)}' their actions 

 and cries. 



Colonel McCall (Proc. Phil. Ac, June, 1851), also gives 

 ail account of this hird, as met with by him in Western 

 Texas, between San Antonio and the Eio Clrande River, as 

 well as in New- Mexico. He did not fall in with it until he 

 had reached the Limpia River, a hundred miles west of the 

 Pecos, in Texas, where the Acacia glandulosa was more or 

 less common, and the mesquite-grasses and other •jilants 

 bearing nutritious seeds were abundant. There they were 

 very numerous and very fat, and much disposed to seek 

 the farms and cultivate the acquaintance of man. About 

 the rancho of Mr. White, near El Paso, he found them very 

 numerous, and, in flocks of fifty or a hundred, resorting 

 morning and evening to the barnyard, feeding around the 

 grain-stacks in company with the poultry, and receiving 

 their portion from the hand of the owner. He found them 

 distributed through the countrj^ from the Limpia to the 

 Rio Grande, and along the latter river from Eagle Spring 

 Pass to Dona Ana. 



The same careful observer, in a communication to Mr. 

 Cassin, gives the western limit of this species. He thinks 

 it is confined to a narrow belt of countiy between the 31st 

 and 34th parallels of latitude, from the Pecos River, in 

 Texas, to the Sierra Nevada and the contiguous desert in 

 California. It has not been found on the western side of 

 these mountains. 



Colonel McCall met with it at Alamo Mucho, forty-four 

 miles west of the Colorado River. West of this stretches 

 a desolate waste of sand, — a barrier w^hich effectually sep- 

 arates this species from its ally, the California Quail. 



This species is known to be abundant in the countr^^ 

 around the sources of the Gila River, and has also been 

 found along that river from the Pimo villages to its mouth, 

 and there is no doubt that it inhabits the entire valley of 

 the Gila. It was also common along the Colorado River, 

 as far as the mouth of the Gila, and has been met with in 

 that valley as high up as Tampia Creek, latitude 34°. 



