UPLAND SHOOTING, 
219 
QUAIL SHOOTING. 
HAVE already, under my list of Upland 
Game, given a full description of this 
lovely little bird from the pages of Audu¬ 
bon and Wilson. 
Both of these authors lean to the south¬ 
ern fashion of calling this bird a Par¬ 
tridge. Now the truth of the matter is 
simply this, that the bird in question is 
'properly and accurately neither one nor the other, but a distinct 
species, possessing no English name whatever. The ornitholo¬ 
gical name of the Partridge is Perdix, of the Quail Coturnix , of 
the American bird, distinct from either, Ortyx. The latter 
name being the Greek word, as Coturnix is the Latin word, 
meaning Quail. It is, of course, impossible to talk about kill¬ 
ing Ortyxes, or more correctly Ortyges , we must therefore, 
perforce call these birds either Quail or Partridge. 
Now as both the European Partridges are considerably more 
than double the size of the American bird, as they are never in 
any country migratory , and as they differ from the Ortyx in not 
having the same woodland habits, in cry and in plumage; while 
in size, and in being a bird of passage, the European Quail 
exactly resembles that of America; resembling it in all other 
respects far more closely than the Partridge proper—I canno 
for a moment hesitate in saying that American Quail is the 
correct and proper English name for the Ortyx Virginiana , and 
I conceive that the naturalists who first distinguished him from 
the Quail with which he was originally classed, sanction this 
