BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 369 



Range. — Upper Sonoran and southern half of Transition zones of eastern 

 North America from South Dakota, southern Minnesota, southern 

 Ontario and southwestern Maine south to eastern and northern Texas, 

 Guh" coast and northern Florida, west to eastern Colorado; introduced 

 in central Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, California, Oregon and 

 Washington. 



History. 



The cheery, interrogative call of Bob-white was one of the 

 first distinctive sounds of the open field that, as a child, I 

 knew and loved among the hills of New England. It was as 

 well known among the country folk as the morning carol of 

 the Robin in the orchard, the drumming of the Ruft'ed Grouse 

 in the woods or the reiterated plaint of the Whip-poor-will on 

 the moonlit doorstone. Bob-white was ever an optimist, for 

 even if, as the farmers stoutly maintained, his call sometimes 

 presaged a storm, the prophecy "more wet" was dehvered 

 with such vim, in such a cheerful frame of mind, and in such a 

 joyous, happy tone as to make rain seem the most desirable 

 thing in life. It appears that this cheerful, brisk and busy 

 little fellow is fain to express in the brief ringing notes hob, 

 white, or bob, bob, white, his love, his longings, his impetuous 

 desires, his joy in life, his appreciation of the warm sunshine 

 and the fragrant sensuous breeze, his abundant content with 

 his lot and his defiance to all his rivals. What other sound in 

 nature is so heartening.^ And now, as ever, in the grassy 

 fields of New England, in the wide rolling lands of the west, or 

 under a burning southern sky, wherever that call is heard it 

 gladdens the hearts of men. Psychologists may tell us that 

 the bird is merely wound up like a clock and set to run for a 

 certain time, or until the sexual impulse runs down, but there 

 is in his call the gladness of spring days, a quality unmistakable 

 and unquenchable, and "all the world" loves it. 



Perhaps there is no bird to which the American people are 

 more deeply indebted for both aesthetic and material benefits. 

 He is the most democratic and ubiquitous of all our game 

 birds. He is not a bird of desert, wilderness or mountain 

 peak, which one must go far to find. He seeks the home, 

 farm, garden and field; he is the friend and companion of 

 mankind; a much needed helper on the farm; a destroyer of 



