with us the whole year, and often suffer extremely by long, hard winters and 

 deep snows. At such times, the arts of man combine with the inclemency of the 

 season for their destruction. To the ravages of the gim are added others of a 

 more insidious kind; traps are placed on almost every plantation, in such places 

 as they are known to frequent. These are formed of lath, or thinly-split sticks, 

 somewhat in the shape of an obtuse cone, laced together with cord, having a small 

 hole at top, with a sliding lid, to take out the game by. This is supported by the 

 common figure 4 trigger ; and grain is scattered below and leading to the place. 

 By this contrivance, ten or fifteen have sometimes been taken at a time." 



These traps are still in use in many parts of the South, while still more in- 

 genious ones are employed throughout all the northern states. Simply enormous 

 numbers of our quail are thus annually destroyed — in some sections utterly ex- 

 terminated. So common were these birds in Wilson's time, that they brought only 

 from twelve to eighteen cents apiece in the Philadelphia markets. There is another 

 thing to be considered, however ; the guns used in these days by sportsmen in 

 hunting quail are far more certain and fatal than the old flint-lock, muzzle-loading 

 ones used to be in the days of Wilson and Audubon. 



A few days ago I was in the Center Market of Washington, D. C, and there 

 I saw boxes of the birds — 150 in a box — for sale, while one man had three flour- 

 barrels full of them ! This sort of thing cannot go on forever without extermina- 

 tion being the sure and final result. 



But now listen to Audubon's account, and note how they destroyed the bob- 

 whites in his day (1832). "These birds," he says, "are easily caught in snares, 

 common dead-falls, traps and pens, like those for the wild turkey, but propor- 

 tionate to the size of the bird. Many are shot, but the principal havoc is effected 

 by means of nets, especially in the western and southern states." Then he gives 

 another account of how "a number of persons on horseback, provided with a net, 

 set out in search of partridges, riding along the fences or briar-thickets, which the 

 birds are known to frequent." 



It will not be necessary to quote the rest of his story in extenso, for it is too 

 long for my present purpose; but I may say, in support of the fact that the quails 

 are not nearly so numerous now as in his day, that he closes the tale with the 

 following words : "In this manner, fifteen or twenty partridges are caught at one 

 driving, and sometimes many hundreds in the course of a day. Most netters give 

 liberty to a pair out of each flock, that the breed may be continued." Mind you, 

 one pair out of each flock — where they captured "many hundreds" in a day ! The 

 chances of "continuing the breed" by any such magnanimous procedure would 

 have about as much effect as would _the sticking up of little placards in the fields 

 and thickets by the sportsmen for the quails to read, begging them to lay double 

 the number of eggs to the setting, and to raise at least six or seven broods to the 

 season ! 



Perhaps the most glaring example of the rapid extermination of several of 



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