AMERICAN QUAIL 269 



secondaries white, primaries fuscous, upper tail-coverts white, base of tail 

 white, end fuscous, lower breast and belly white. Im. Similar, but head 

 and neck blackish and upperparts more or less margined with buffy. L., 

 19-00; W., 10-50; Tar., 2'40; B., 3'40. 



Range. Coasts of N. and S. A. from Tex., La., and Va. (formerly N. J.) 

 s. on both coasts of Mex. to the West Indies, s. Brazil, and cen. Chile; 

 casual n. to N. B. Breeds probably throughout its range. 



Long Island, A. V. 



Nest, a depression in the sand. Eggs, 3, buffy white or creamy buff, 

 rather evenly spotted and blotched with chocolate, 2'20 x 1'55. Date, 

 Mouth St. John's River, Fla., Apl. 10; Coast S. C., Apl. 20; Cobb's Is., Va., 

 May 10. 



This not uncommon species from Virginia southward, is confined 

 exclusively to the coast, and breeds usually in isolated pairs. Wayne 

 states that in the winter it is found on the South Carolina coast in 

 flocks of from twenty to seventy-five individuals. It agrees in habits 

 with other members of this small family. 



1905. JOB, H. K., Wild Wings, 239 (nesting). 



The EUROPEAN OYSTER-CATCHER (285. Hcematopus ostralegus) is of 

 accidental occurrence in Greenland. 



The MEXICAN JACANA (288. Jacana spinosa) occurs in the lower Rio 

 Grande valley of Tex., in Cuba and southward, and has been once 

 recorded from Fla. (Lake Okeechobee, Oct. 1889; Mearns, Auk, 1902, 79). 



X. ORDER GALLINJE. GALLINACEOUS BIRDS 1 



30. FAMILY ODONTOPHORID.E. AMERICAN QUAIL. (Fig. 44.) 



The members of this family, some sixty in number, are the American 

 representatives of the Old World Perdicidce, or true Quails and Par- 

 tridges, to which structurally they are closely related though differing 

 in external appearance. Doubtless the two 'families,' as for conven- 

 ience we term them, had a common* origin, just as Old and New World 

 Pigeons, or Parrots, or Spoonbills, for example, have had, and we may 

 believe that in the later Tertiary Period, when a much warmer climate 

 prevailed in Arctic regions, their range was doubtless continuous. 



The present center of abundance of the American species is in the 

 tropics, to which the seventeen species of Wood Quail of the genus 

 Odontophorus are confined, only seven of the sixty members of the 

 family crossing our southern border. This includes our Bob-white 

 and the Masked Bob-white of northern Sonora, and formerly, at least, 

 southern Arizona, the Scaled, Mearns' and Gambel's Quails of 

 our Mexican border States, and the California Valley and Mountain 

 Quails. 



In eastern North America we have only one species, our familiar 

 Bob-white, not, as we are apt to imagine it, a distinctively North 

 American bird, but the most northern representative of a type whose 

 stronghold is in Mexico where ten forms of the genus Colinus are known. 



