BOB-WHITE. 29 



to the aborigines by the name of ho-ouy (^ho-wee), which is 

 also imitative of the call they sometimes utter, as I have 

 heard, early in the morning, from a partly domesticated covey. 

 When assembled in a corner and about to take wing, the 

 same low, chicken-like twittering, as is employed by the 

 mother towards her more tender brood, is repeated ; but 

 when dispersed, by necessary occupation, or alarm, they are 

 reassembled by a loud and oft-repeated call of anxious 

 and social inquiry. This note, ''ho-wee, is, however, so strongly 

 instinctive as to be commonly uttered without occasion, by 

 the male even in a cage, surrounded by his kindred brood ; 

 so that this expression, at stated times, is only one of gen- 

 eral sympathy and satisfaction, like that of a singing bird 

 uttered when solitary and confined to a cage. 



In consequence of the shortness and concavity of its wings, 

 in common with most other birds of the same family the Ameri- 

 can Quail usually makes a loud whirring noise in its flight, 

 which is seldom long continued, always laborious, and generally 

 so steady as to afford no difficult mark for the expert sports- 

 man. According to the observations of Audubon, the flight of 

 our Partridge and Grouse, when not hurried by alarm, is 

 attended with very little more noise than that of other birds. 

 Whatever may be the fact, when our little Partridges alight on 

 the ground, they often run out to very considerable distances, 

 when not directly flushed, and endeavor to gain the shelter of 

 briers and low bushes, or instinctively squat among the fallen 

 leaves of the woods, from which, with their brown livery, it is 

 difficult to distinguish them. No great destruction is made 

 among them while on the wing, as they do not take a general 

 alarm on being approached, but rise at intervals only by two 

 or three at a time. 



Rob-White has been so long and so persistently called by this 

 nickname that that conservative body, the American Ornithologists' 

 Union, has been constrained to approve of it, and has dignified 

 it with their sanction, — throwing to the winds for one brief mo- 

 ment the " canon of priority," and adopting Seebohm's favorite 

 auctornni plurimortim. The bird is also known as "Quail" in 



