88 
NESTS AND EGGS OE 
complement. These are said to be from twelve to sixteen in number. 
When not pressed to lay, she rambles about with her lord, in close com- 
pany, until compelled to take the nest. She now abandons all recreation, 
becomes sober and maternal, and sets about her duty in earnest. But she 
is not forgotten because she cannot enter into his idle amusements. 
Mounted upon some bush or log which projects above the nest, he stands 
watch, or solaces her weary moments with his best music. This ditty, 
though far from being harmonious, is presumably satisfactory to the one 
concerned. The time spent in incubation lasts for two weeks or more, 
until feeble cries are heard from the nest. The mother-bird now dries 
and cuddles the queer little beings, and the hapj3y parents soon lead them 
off in quest of food. When the young are disturbed by human foes, the 
male-bird utters a shaiqj pit, resembling the common note of the Cardinal 
Grosbeak, which is doubtless the signal for flight. 
The eggs of this Quail differ somewhat in size, and also in orna- 
mentation. The ground-color is usually a creamy-white. The markings 
sometimes occur in the form of freckles, at other times in large scattered 
spots, and frequently in the form of confluent blotches. Their colors pass 
from a uniform shading of olivaceous-drab, through a rusty-drab, into a 
chestnut-brown. All the sjaecimens that we have seen are sharply deflned 
at one extremity and rounded at the other. In a set of fourteen eggs 
before us, the largest measures 1.32 by 1.00 inches; the smallest 1.13 in 
length and .97 in breadth. The average size is 1.23 by .98 inches. From 
the number of eggs sometimes found in a nest, it becomes a question 
whether birds, severely pressed, may not sometimes lay in nests not their 
own. We have no positive information that this does happen, but obser- 
vation renders it highly probable that such is the case with the Virginia 
Quail, and, also, with some other birds. But however this may be, it is 
tolerably certain that broods of young sometimes coalesce after hatching. 
It has even been inferred that several females belong to one male, and 
with their varying broods run together. 
