2IO Brown, Masked Bob--white. \_t^^\ 



entered that section of country, and it is possible that a few were 

 still there on the discovery of the Tombstone and Harshaw mines, 

 but if so they were speedily trodden out of existence by the inrush 

 of fortune hunters. I mention this Ramsey Canon business for the 

 purpose of establishing the eastern boundary line of their former 

 habitat in Arizona. 



Prior to 1870, but just when I cannot now say, Major Bendire, 

 then a Lieutenant of Cavalry, was stationed at Camp Buchannon, 

 on the Sonoite, almost in the very heart of the country where the 

 Bob-whites used to be, but, oddly enough, he did not see or hear 

 them. At that time the valley was heavily grassed and the Apache 

 Indians notoriously bad, a combination that prevented the most 

 sanguine naturalist from getting too close to the ground without 

 taking big chances of permanently slipping under it. For many 

 years Indians, grass, and birds have been gone. The Santa Cruz, 

 to the south and west of the Sonoite, is wider and was more heavily 

 brushed. Those conditions gave the birds a better chance for life 

 and for years they held tenaciously on. Six or seven years ago I 

 was told by a ranchman, living near Calabasas, that a small bunch 

 of Bob-white Quail had shortly before entered his barnyard and 

 that he had killed six of them at one shot. It was a grievous 

 thing to do, but the man did not know that he was wiping out of 

 existence the last remnant of a native Arizona game bird. Later 

 I heard of the remaining few having been occasionally seen, but 

 for several years now no word has come of them. 



I never found them west of the Baboquivari Mountains, and from 

 my knowledge of the country thereabouts I am inclined to fix the 

 eastern slope of that range as their western limit. Between that 

 and Ramsey's Caiion, in the Huachucas, is a distance of nearly 

 one hundred miles. Their deepest point of penetration into the 

 Territory was probably not more than fifty miles, and that was 

 down the Baboquavari or Altar valley. 



In Sonora, Mexico, where I first met with the bird, it was known 

 as Perdice, a name equally misapplied to Cyrtonyx montezufnce. 

 Just why it, or in fact either of these birds, should have been so 

 termed I do not know, but think it was probably a localism used 

 by the rancheros to distinguish it from Codornice, by which two 

 other species of quail were commonly known. It is not easy to 



