Mar., 1909 
DISTRIBUTION AND MOLT OF THE MEARNS QUAIL 
43 
In the stage reached by number 4 the primaries have quite completed their 
growth. 
Figure 2 shows a male in juvenal plumage (number 1), a male in second win- 
ter plumage (number 2), a female in juvenal plumage (with some first winter 
feathers appearing on the upper breast, however) (number 3) and a female in sec- 
ond winter plumage (number 4). 
Dr. Dwight, in a paper on the molt of the North American Tetraonidce (Auk 
XVII, 1900, p. 50), speaks of the young of this species as being alike in the 
juvenal plumage, and resembling the adult female. All the young males I secured 
have the crissum, flanks, and lower abdomen, dull black (a mark surprisingly con- 
spicuous as the birds take flight), while the middle of the breast is rusty brown, a 
foreshadowing of the brilliant markings to appear later; while the young females 
(and adults also) have these same parts white or pinkish. 
This species seems to be late with its breeding. The young of Lophortyx 
gambeli , L. calif ornicus v alii cola, and Orcortyx pictus plumiferus , living under 
very similar conditions, have, by the end of September as a rule, fully acquired 
their first winter plumage, while I have secured young of Cyrtonyx m . mearnsi the 
first week in November which had hardly begun the post-juvenal molt. It is pos- 
sible that the heavy summer rains that occur in the regions inhabited by this species 
destroy many of the earlier sets of eggs, thus forcing the birds to bring out their 
young later, but the same reasoning would apply to other species not so conspicu- 
ously dilatory. 
University of California . 
THE POPULAR NAMES OF BIRDS 
By JONATHAN DWIGHT, JR., M. D. 
P OPULAR or vernacular names are of two sorts — those very local in their use 
and those approved by standard authorities for general use wherever the 
language is spoken. The standard for North American Birds, for over 
twenty years, has been the A. O. U. Check-List which has as a matter of fact rec- 
ognized the most widely used local names and only supplied others when no popu- 
ular name was in vogue. Of late years unfortunately its authority has been im- 
paired by a few radicals who have been agitating certain “reforms”, and under the 
circumstances it may be well to weigh these claims which do not seem to rest on a 
very solid foundation. 
There is no immunity to the germs of fads, and their virulence is attested by 
every new fashion, every new cult, every new world-language, every new breakfast 
food that periodically flourishes and claims its victims; and just as some visionaries 
seek to improve on the natural development of dogs or horses by clipping of ears 
and docking of tails, so, in much the same spirit, others clip and dock words in the 
attempt to reform spelling or improve grammar. 
Today some of our apostles of vernacular reform wish to throw away the pos- 
sessive case for the popular names of birds and beasts and substitute the so-called 
adjectival form; — they would have us say “Audubon Warbler,” “Anna Humming- 
bird,” “Wilson Thrush,” “Merriam Elk,” and so on, dropping the time-honored 
apostrophe and the “s.” Tomorrow, perhaps, it may please them to drop “need- 
less” syllables and thereby attain such agreeable results as Bar Owl, Belt King- 
