264 GROUSE, s>;iPE, quail, woodcock, etc. 



the greatest authority on field sports ever known in the 

 United States, will prove : — 



' The ornithological name of the partridge is perclix, 

 of the quail coturnix, of the American bird, distinct 

 from either, oi'tyx ; the latter being the (xreek word, as 

 the coturnix is the Latin word, meaning quail. 



' It is of course impossible to talk of killing ortyxes, 

 or more properly, ortyges ; we must therefore, perforce, 

 call these birds either quail or partridge. 



'Now, as both the European partridges are con- 

 siderably larger than the American bird, as they are 

 never migratory in any country, and as they differ 

 from the ortyx in not having the same woodland habits, 

 in cry, and in plumage ; while in size, (?) and in being 

 a bird of passage, the European resembles that of 

 America — resembling it in all other respects far more 

 closely than the partridge proper — I cannot hesitate for 

 a moment in saying that American quail is the correct 

 and proper English name for the Ortyx Virginiana ; 

 and, I conceive, that the naturalists who first distin- 

 guished him from the quail, with which he was origi- 

 nally classed, sanction the English nomenclature by 

 giving him a scientific title directly analogous to quail, 

 and not to partridge. 



' I should as soon think, myself, of calling the bird a 

 turkey as a partridge, and I shall ever uphold that the 

 question is entirely sejt at rest, and that the true name 

 of this dear little bird in the vernacular is, American 



