The Mountain- Quail 389 



Lower California (Mexico) it is found where stu- 

 pendous boulders, piled into cathedral towers, 

 almost hide the giant sugar-pines that struggle 

 through the rifts between them. But I never saw 

 it below the mountain's top, or in the first few 

 hundred feet of the mighty gulches that plunge 

 abruptly down. As, however, we approach the 

 northern line of California, where the rainfall is 

 greater, and the timber runs much nearer sea level, 

 it becomes more of a lowland bird, until, in Ore- 

 gon, it may almost be called the common quail of 

 the country ; for it runs out into the edges of the 

 valleys, and in the thickets adjoining meets the 

 valley-quail, which there is fast becoming more 

 scarce. 



Like the valley-quail, the mountain-quail is 

 easily tamed, and might be utilized in those parts 

 of the East where the winter snows are too much 

 for Bob-white. 



With plenty of room it might be induced to 

 breed in captivity. Where I lived in 1878 there 

 were two that ran with the chickens, and went 

 into the same coop with them every night. They 

 were so tame that I could almost pick them up, 

 and with the same effort they could probably have 

 been made as tame as any chicken. For many 

 months after being brought from their wilder 

 home they stayed about the place with no re- 

 straint, but as both were males, the question of 



