on some American Quails.



113



Thus ended my experience with the first Massena Quails born

in France, and now I cannot hope to get any others before the end

of the war, when we shall be allowed to return to our peaceful

hobbies.


The Texan and Cuban Bob Whites did not breed with me,

neither did the Scaled or Blue Partridge, but my colleague of the

Acclimatisation Society, Delacour, brought up a covey of the last, as

•did also M. Biquet at Montpellier. These have also been reared by a

member of the Avicultural Society of England, Mr. Shore Baily, who

obtained a cross with a Californian male, and he kindly presented a

couple of the hybrids to our Acclimatisation Society. They were

both males, and one is still living.


I imagine that some of the thirty-two species described and

figured by Gould in his splendid folio on the Oclontopliorince, are very

closely related, perhaps only local varieties, blending out into one

another, if not hybrids. Most have, anyhow, very distinct and

dissimilar call-notes, and their top-knots are so fanciful and various as

to prove their very good taste in the way of natural selection, if

natural selection had anything to do with the formation of their

species. Indeed, no milliner’s shop could with a greater diversity of

elegant hats court the approbation of the fashionable world.


Several of the so-called American Quails or Partridges have at

times found their way to Europe. I have seen at our Acclimatisation

Gardens in the Bois de Boulogne the splendid Plumed Partridge

( Oreortyx) with its two long crest feathers streaming over its back.

The London Zoo has bred Scaled and Douglas Quails. The Cali¬

fornian has been turned out in France and bred wild, but dis¬

appeared. The Virginian Boh White has been tried also with better

success, since Macgillivray and Harting have included it in their list

of British birds, and I have known a place in Brittany where they

did well for a time. Harting, in his ‘ Handbook,’ has mentioned

many attempts to acclimatise them in England during the course of

the last century, but they seem all to have failed after a few years of

breeding at large. The Californians alone have stood their ground,

being very prolific, but only as inmates of aviaries, where they are

now quite common.



