[Given by Hernandez as the ancient Mexican name of the genus Ortyx and its congeners. But the actual Mexican word was çolin or zolin; Molina, Vocab. Mexicano y Castellano (Mexico, 1571) has ‘Çolin, codorniz.’
Colin was thus app. an erroneous form, due to omission of the cedilla in printing. From the work of Hernandez (a 1628) it passed into those of Nieremberg (1635), Willughby (1676), Ray (1678), Buffon, etc. It has no connection with the Fr. Colin a popular name of a sea-gull (Belon, Hist. Nat. Oyseaux, 1555), with which it has by some been confused.]
The American quail or partridge; also called bobwhite; in pl. the various species of the sub-family Odontophorinæ or Ortyginæ, to which this belongs.
[Cf. a. 1628. Hernandez, Nova plantarum, animalium … Mexicanorum historia (Rome 1651), 16, 22, 42.
1635. J. Eusebius Nierembergius, Hist. Nat. (Antwerp), 214, 232.]
1678. Ray, Willughby’s Ornith., 387, 393. A Certain brown Bird of the Lake of Mexico is called Acolin, because it is of the bigness of a Quail.… Those of New Spain call Quails Colin.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Colin … the name of an American bird, called by most authors a quail, but supposed by Nieremberg to be rather a species of partridge.
1812. Smellie, trans. Buffon’s Nat. Hist., XII. 439. Colins are very common in New Spain.
1881. Standard, 2 March, 5/2. It [the Act] includes the colin, and omits the quail.
