CHAP.X.] DISTINCTIVE PLUMAGE. 383 



subject to suffer from adverse accidents than if kept in 

 a low cage. When disturbed, or impelled to migrate, 

 as during their evening restlessness, they mount almost 

 perpendicularly with a strong and sudden flight, and fall 

 either stunned by a hard roof, or rebounding from an 

 elastic one, often with severe injury. Thus Mr. Rayner 

 complains, " My Quails fed and lived as the Pheasants 

 did, but at night invariably took to flight in the aviary, 

 and I suppose beating themselves against the wirework 

 at the roof, fell eventually into a fountain of water which 

 was in the centre of the aviary, and were drowned. I 

 had several pair in succession, but this was the fate of 

 all." 



Most persons on seeing our own caged Quails for the 

 first time, suppose them to be not adult birds, but the 

 growing young of Partridges or some other game bird 

 which they are less accustomed to behold : and Buffon 

 tells us that Theophrastus found so great a resemblance 

 between the Partridge and the Quail that he gave to 

 the latter the name of dwarf Partridge. " But," says 

 Temminck, " as the species of these two genera seem 

 to have considerable analogy, both in their carriage, and 

 in the form of their bill and feet, and as this appearance 

 of generic identity, if judged of at the first glance, is of 

 a nature to mislead and embarrass the classifier as to 

 the place which he ought to assign to those species, I 

 will point out preliminarily the surest mode of distin- 

 guishing a Quail from a Partridge. This marked cha- 

 racter is taken from the form of the wings. All the 

 birds which compose the genus Partridge have the three 

 outer quill feathers the shortest, regularly slanting one 

 beyond the other, the fourth and fifth being the longest; 

 whilst in all the species which compose the genus Quail, 



