46 Dr. E. Cones —Field Notes on Lophortyx gambeli. 
Colymbus torquatus, Briinnich. Great Northern Diver. 
A specimen of this Diver, in immature plumage, was sent to 
me, marked as having been obtained at Fort Stockton, 6th 
November. 
Podiceps californicus (Heermann). California Grebe. 
I shot one specimen at Mitchell* s Lake, in December 1863. 
Podilymbus podiceps (Linnseus). Pied-bill Grebe. 
Not uncommon near San Antonio in the winter. I observed 
several on a pond near Matamoras in August 1864, and shot 
two, one of which I now have in my collection. Another (a 
young bird) was also sent to me by Colonel M'Cormick, in the 
collection made by Mr. P. Duffy at Fort Stockton. 
III .—Field Notes on Lophortyx gambeli. Z.z 
By Elliott Coues, M.D. 
To study the habits of Gambeks Quail we must leave far 
behind us all the luxuries and comforts of civilized life. A 
thousand miles beyond the advance-wave of the western tide of 
civilization we must go, and stop just before meeting the re¬ 
ceding under-tow that is now setting back from the Pacific 
coast of North America towards the Rocky Mountains. Be¬ 
tween the two points there is a wild region over which the 
savage Apache Indian is still master, where the white man only 
retains his hold by daily-renewed hand-to-hand conflicts. It is 
a region of which it may be truly said that there is “ the very 
grandeur of desolation.” The face of nature is torn, as by 
Titanic violence, into yawning chasms, rocky canons, and dry, 
tortuous arroyos, upheaved into stately mountains and gro¬ 
tesquely-shaped picachos and precipice-bounded mesas, covered 
for hundreds of miles with black lava vomited ages ago from 
extinct and now unrecognizable volcanos. Rivers there are in 
whose dry sandy beds the traveller may perish from thirst—and 
vast plains, too, covered with dry crisp grass and sage-brush 
{Artemisia) and grease-wood [Larrea mexicana ), yet almost 
deserts from this same dearth of water. But it is a country of 
anomalies and contrasts as well as of wonders. Embosomed in 
the wildest of mountains are lovely valleys, moist, green, and 
fertile. Vast forests of noble pines and firs, and immense tracts 
