96 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
inconvenience, great extremes of temperature. They 
are seemingly at ease among the burning sands of the 
desert, where for months the thermometer daily marks 
a hundred, and may reach a hundred and forty, ‘in the 
best shade that could be procured,’ as Colonel McCall 
says; and they are equally at home, the year round, 
among the mountains, where snow lies on the ground 
in winter. 
“The quail’s food is made up of various substances. 
Like the rest of its tribe, it is chiefly granivorous, eat- 
ing seeds of every description; but fruits and insects 
form a large portion of its fare. It devours insects of 
such sorts as it can capture, and particularly those kinds 
that infest plants. In the fall it gathers cherries and 
grapes, and other ‘fruits,’ properly speaking, as well as 
the various berries not usually so called. It visits patches 
of the prickly pear (Opuntia), to feed upon the soft, 
juicy tunas, that are eaten by everything in Arizona, 
from men and bears to beetles. In the spring it shows 
fondness for the buds of different plants, particularly 
mesquite and willow; birds shot at this time are fre- 
quently found with sticky bits of the buds about their 
bills. But though they thus feed so extensively upon 
this substance containing salicine, I never noticed that 
the flesh acquired a bitter taste. There is, as yet, little 
cultivated grain in Arizona, but doubtless some future 
historian will have to add our cereals to the bird’s list, 
and speak of Gambel’s quail as frequenting old corn 
and wheat-fields and the neighborhood of hayricks, 
where a large share of its food is to be gleaned. Like 
