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Volume V September-October, 1903 Number 5 
With the Mearns Quail in Southwestern Texas 
BY LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES 
F all the bizarre and curious creatures that live in our county, 
it would be hard to find one more arbitrarily marked, or colored 
more apparently in opposition to all the laws of protective grad- 
ation and coloration than the Mearns quail, or as has been 
longer known, the Massena partridge or “Fool Quail.’’ It is 
especially noticeable in this case since the other genera in the 
family are among the most remarkable exponents of the per- 
fection of ‘locality painting,’ being dark above, where the most 
light strikes them, and pale below, where the shadow comes, thus making a 
monotinted ground upon which the most exquisite detail of scenery is painted. 
This assists the creature to be assimilated into its natural setting to a degree 
which only those who have come face to face with a sitting grouse or quail 
can truly appreciate. Therefore, when we see the fantastic little cock Massena 
with his dark chestnut breast, jet black belly and flanks, and harlequin-painted 
head, it is hard to conceive how he was ever able to qualify in the race for survival 
among a group of birds so marvellously protected as his congeners. 
With the prospect of a field trip into the “Big Bend Country’’ in western 
Texas, I looked forward with the keenest pleasure to meeting the Mearns quail 
{Cyrtonyx monteziunce mearnsi) for I felt sure that he would, in some ingenious 
way, justify his bold deviation from his family’s stock traits. The accounts I had 
heard of his stupid tameness made me wonder the more, for it is a fairly good rule 
that those birds most beautifully assimilable in their naiural landscape, rely on 
their inconspicuousness the most, and those, which do not thus hide in ‘full view’ 
take flight or run on the apprehension of danger. Here seemed to be a strong 
contradiction, which I hoped to solve. 
