NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 139 



293 a. Callipepla sqnamata castanogastris BREWST. 



Chestnut-bellied Scaled Partridge. 



Hab. Eastern Mexico and Lower Rio Grande of Texas. 



This bird is like the last but the general coloring is deeper and 

 richer. The bird appears to inhabit the low lands along the lower Rio 

 Grande Valley, while C. squamata inhabits the table lands of North- 

 western Mexico, Western Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. 



Mr. George H. Ragsdale, of Gainesville, Texas, kindly sent me 

 four eggs of this bird for inspection ; these have a ground color vary- 

 ing from white to a buff with the surface marked with minute specks 

 of reddish-brown. In a specimen having a white ground the mark- 

 ings have a purplish tint. The shape of the eggs is characteristic of 

 all eggs of the Partridges. The sizes of the four specimens are, i.iyx 

 .94, 1. 13 x. 92, 1. 15 x. 94, i.i6x.93. 



Capt. B. F. Goss has a set of ten eggs of this Partridge taken 

 May 14, 1886, in Western Texas. They are dull white speckled all 

 over with fine dots of different shades of brown. Some of the eggs 

 have a few small brown spots on them more than a sixteenth of an 

 inch in diameter ; they resemble the eggs of the Scaled Partridge, but 

 are more thinly speckled and much lighter in color. Sizes, 1.25 x. 99, 

 1.17x1.00,1.24x1.06,1.26x1.05, i. 26 x. 99, 1.24x1.05, i. 25 x. 99, 1.27 

 xi.oo, i. 27 x. 99, 1.28x1.00. The nest from which these eggs were 

 taken was on the ground and made of leaves and dry grass. 

 294. Callipepla californica (SHAW.) [482.] 



California Partridge. 



Hab. Coast valleys from California to Washington Territory. 



The Californian Partridge or Valley Quail inhabits the lower por- 

 tions of California and Oregon, where it is very abundant, and also 

 Eastward nearly to the Colorado River. The nest is made on the 

 ground, and is often found in curious places. Mr. Emerson says it is 

 sometimes placed in the garden, within twenty feet of the doorway ; 

 he saw eggs of this Quail laid in the nest of chickens that had hidden 

 their nests in the barn-yard, and it is commonly found under hedges, 

 bushes, brush-heaps ; even in the grass by the wayside. Mr. Bryant 

 mentions several cases of this bird's nesting in trees upon the end of a 

 broken or decayed limb, or at the intersection of two large branches. 

 One case he cites of a brood being hatched in a vine-covered trellis at 

 the front door of a popular seminary.* 



Mr. H. R. Taylor, of Alameda, California, records a nest of the 

 Spurred Towhee on the ground in which were four eggs of the Towhee 

 and two of the California Quail.f 



* Unusual Nesting Sites, I. Bull. Cal. Acad. Sci. II, 451. 

 t Ornithologist and Oologist, Vol. X, p. 142. 



