QUAILS. 199 
somest representative of the Perdicidw found on the Con- 
tinent, and also the largest, an adult male having a length 
of twelve inches. The wings and tail and the posterior 
half of the body are a rich olive-brown above; below a 
purplish-chestnut, barred with tawny, black and white, 
the forepart being a rich slate-blue, and the throat a pur- 
plish-chestnut. The crown is ornamented with two slen- 
der, keeled feathers, which attain a length of four inches 
in the male. This beautiful creature has a soft, musical 
voice—at least the male has—and its crowing note of 
coo-ee-coo-ee ! sounds pleasant among the shrubbery of the 
silent hills. It is found throughout the hilly districts of 
California and Western Oregon, and a few are scattered 
in parts of the western division of Washington Territory, 
its eastern limit being checked by the Cascade Range. 
It is found at an altitude of six thousand feet on some of 
the mountains, which is about the line of perpetual snow 
in portions of the Cascade Range. It is a very shy bird, 
and one of the hardest on the Pacific Coast to bag, on 
account of its skulking habits, the difficulty of flushing 
it, the manner in which it runs before a dog, and its cus- 
tom of rushing for cover when started. It requires a large 
experience to kill many plumed quails in a day, as they 
fly so strongly and rapidly that a good deal of the shoot- 
ing must be snap shots. They nearly always run up hill 
when fleeing from any object that alarms them, and as they 
are fleet of foot, a man must make haste if he would get 
a shot at them. The best time for bagging them is when 
the snow is on the ground, as their tracks are then plainly 
discernible, and the cold induces them to run or fly 
rather than skulk. The first requisite for shooting them 
successfully on the wing is a steady setter that will re- 
trieve, and keep close to the gun, as a wide ranging dog 
flushes them too soon. A bevy will not lie before the 
steadiest veteran until they have been broken up two or 
three times, and even then they cannot always be relied 
