QUAILS. 199 



somest representative of the Perdicidm found on the Con- 

 tinent, and also the largest, an adult male having a length 

 of twelve inches. The wings and tail and the posterior 

 half of the body are a rich olive-brown above; below a 

 purplish-chestnut, barred with tawny, black and white, 

 the forepart being a rich slate-blue, and the throat a pur- 

 plish-chestnut. The crown is ornamented with two slen- 

 der, keeled feathers, which attain a length of four inches 

 in the male. This beautiful creature has a soft, musical 

 voice — at least the male has — and its crowing note of 

 coo-ee-coo-ee ! sounds pleasant among the shrubbery of the 

 silent hills. It is found throughout the hilly districts of 

 California and Western Oregon, and a few are scattered 

 in parts of the western division of Washington Territory, 

 its eastern limit being checked by the Cascade Eange. 

 It is found at an altitude of six thousand feet on some of 

 the mountains, which is about the line of perpetual snow 

 in portions of the Cascade Eange. It is a very shy bird, 

 and one of the hardest on the Pacific Coast to bag, on 

 account of its skulking habits, the difficulty of flushing 

 it, the manner in which it runs before a dog, and its cus- 

 tom of rushing for cover when started. It requires a large 

 experience to kill many plumed quails in a day, as they 

 fly so strongly and rapidly that a good deal of the shoot- 

 ing must be snap shots, They nearly always run up hill 

 when fleeing from any object that alarms them, and as they 

 are fleet of foot, a man must make haste if he would get 

 a shot at them. The best time for bagging them is when 

 the snow is on the ground, as their tracks are then plainly 

 discernible, and the cold induces them to run or fly 

 rather than skulk. The first requisite for shooting them 

 successfully on the wing is a steady setter that will re- 

 trieve, and keep close to the gun, as a wide ranging dog 

 flushes them too soon. A bevy will not lie before the 

 steadiest veteran until they have been broken up two or 

 three times, and even then they cannot always be relied 



