262 AMERICAN GAME. 
closely to that sub-genus. We wish much that this 
question could be settled; which we fear, now, that it 
never can be, from the want of-any sporting authority, 
in the country, to pass judgment. The “Spirit of the 
Times,” though still as well supported and as racy as 
ever, has, I regret to say, ceased to be an authority, and 
has become a mere arena wherein for every scribbler to 
discuss and support his own undigested and crude 
notions without consideration or examination; and 
wherein those who know the least, invariably fancying 
themselves to know the most, vituperate with all the 
spite of partisan personality, every person who having 
learned more by reading, examination of authorities, 
and experience than they, ventures to express an opin- 
ion differing from their old-time prejudices, and the 
established misnomers of provincial or sectional vulgar-— 
ism. - 4 
But to resume, the American Quail, or “ Partridge of 
the South,” is too well known throughout the whole of 
America, from the waters of the Kennebec on the East, 
and the Great Lakes on the North—beyond which latter 
except on the South-western peninsula of Canada West, 
lying between Lakes Erie, St. Clair, and Huron, they are 
scarcely to be found—is too well known, almost to the 
extreme South, to need description. Their beauty, their 
familiar ery, their domestic habits during the winter, 
when they become halt-civilized, feeding in the barn- 
yards, and often roosting under the cattle-sheds with the 
