262 AMERICAN GAME. 



closely to that sub-genus. We wish much that this 

 question could be settled ; which we fear, now, that it 

 never can be, from the want of any sporting authority, 

 in the country, to pass judgment. The " Spirit of the 

 Times," though still as well supported and as racy as 

 ever, has, I regret to say, ceased to be an authority, and 

 has become a mere arena wherein for every scribbler to 

 discuss and support his own undigested and crude 

 notions without consideration or examination ; and 

 wherein those who know the least, invariably fancying 

 themselves to know the most, vituperate with all the 

 spite of partisan personality, every person who having 

 learned more by reading, examination of authorities, 

 and experience than they, ventures to express an opin- 

 ion differing from their old-time prejudices, and the 

 established misnomers of provincial or sectional vulgar- 

 ism. 



But to resume, the American Quail, or " Partridge of 

 the South," is too well known throughout the whole of 

 America, from the waters of the Kennebec on the East, 

 and the Great Lakes on the North beyond which latter 

 except on the South-western peninsula of Canada West, 

 lying between Lakes Erie, St. Glair, and Huron, they are 

 scarcely to be found is too well known, almost to the 

 extreme South, to need description. Their beauty, their 

 familiar cry, their domestic habits during the winter, 

 when they become half-civilized, feeding in the barn- 

 yards, and often roosting under the cattle-sheds with the 



