142 The Scottish Naturalist. 



Gould remarks, " If acorrect statistical account could be obtained 

 of the numbers shot in the British Islands, and of the numbers 

 brought to our markets alive, from Egypt, Italy, and other 

 southern and eastern countries, I imagine we should be truly 

 astonished; and Latham has recorded that twice a year the 

 Island of Capri was visited with Quails in such numbers that 

 the Bishop of the island drew the chief part of his revenue from 

 them, and on the west coast of Naples, within the space of four 

 or five miles, 100,000 had been taken in a day." 



While on the subject of these wonderful migrations of Quail 

 I '^can scarcely bring it to a close without alluding to the 

 miraculous provision of these birds as food in the wilderness. 

 We read in Ps. Ixxviii. 27. (E.V.) "He .caused the east wind 

 to blow under heaven; and through His power He brought 

 in the south-west wind." How marvellously does this 

 coincide with what we see in nature ; the Quail came 

 up with an east wind, and at the ' right moment, a sudden 

 shift takes place, causing them to fall down exhausted 

 in the heart of the camp of the Israelites. And in Ps. cv. 40, 

 " The people asked, and He brought Quails." and again in Ex. 

 xvi. 1 1 -1 3, "It came to pass that at even the Quails came up and 

 covered the camp." With this before us, is it not strange that 

 some dispute whether the bird with which the Israelites 

 were visited were Quail at all, and others going still further have 

 asserted that they were not even birds, and this in the face of 

 what we are told, Ps. Ixxviii. 27, " He rained flesh also upon 

 them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea." 



Dr. Tristram, a clergyman not only thoroughly acquainted 

 with the Arabic and Hebrew roots, but one who has explored 

 every inch of Palestine, and at the same time a good ornithologist 

 and close observer of nature, may well be considered competent 

 to give as good and sound an 0]:)inion as most men, and he 

 says in his interesting little work " The Natural History of the 

 Bible," that ingenious commentators have spared no pains in the 

 attempt to prove the Hebrew word " Sclav" was not a quail, 

 but some other creature they imagined more likely to be found 

 in the desert. In spite of all etymology, and of the distinct allu- 

 sion in the Psalms oi feathered {o\n\ some have suggested Locusts, 

 some Flying Fish ; others again have conjectured Sand-Grouse, 

 " Kata," or the desert Sheil-I )rake, ( Casarca rutila), found about 

 the Salt Lakes, a most uneatable bird ; while Dean Stanley has 

 put forward the idea of large red-legged Cranes three feet high, 



