GAMBEL’S QUAIL 97 
other Galline, it swallows quantities of sand and gravel 
to facilitate, it is supposed, the trituration in the gizzard 
of the harder kinds of food. 
“T believe that the quail moults at least twice a year, 
but the spring change is apparently less complete, and 
certainly more gradual, than that of the fall, the birds 
seeming rather to furbish up a part of their plumage 
than to furnish themselves with entirely new attire. By 
the latter part of summer (at Fort Whipple) the plu- 
mage is faded and worn with incubation and the care 
of the young, and the renewal begins as soon as the 
latest brood is reared. The process is a long one, and 
the birds are rarely found at any season in such poor 
condition as to be unfit for preservation, nor are they 
ever deprived of flight. No crest is occasionally found 
for a short time in early autumn, but new feathers gen- 
erally sprout before all the old ones are dropped. I 
think they are shed from behind forward, so that the 
front ones are lost the last. The fully developed crest 
is a striking and beautiful ornament, hardly to be sur- 
passed in stylishness and jaunty effect. It averages an 
inch and a half in length, and sometimes reaches two 
inches in the most vigorous males; in the female it is 
rarely over an inch. The male’s is a glossy jet black; 
the female’s has a brownish cast. The number of feath- 
ers composing it is variable; five or six is usual, but 
there may be ten. They all spring from a single point 
on the top of the head—just behind the transverse white 
line that crosses the crown from eye to eye. The feath- 
ers are club-shaped, enlarged at the tip and curling over 
