432 BIEDS OF NORFOLK. 



It is thus then, I believe, that local changes, the 

 commencement of which was contemporaneous with 

 the earliest records of the diminution of quails in this 

 country, may be considered as having had no little 

 influence in rendering them so scarce as a summer 

 resident. At the same time it is quite possible that 

 the numbers annually visiting our shores from the 

 continent may have also diminished considerably of 

 late years ; and that, too, from causes which European 

 ornithologists would be better able to explain than 

 ourselves. 



Of other localities, besides the Feltwell district, in 

 which the nests or young of this species have been 

 found during the last twenty years, I may mention the 

 following, as either recorded by Messrs. Gurney and 

 Fisher in the " Zoologist," or in other ways coming 

 under my own observation : — 



1845. On the 15th of August a nest containing 

 eleven eggs, very recently laid, was taken in a grass field 

 near Yarmouth. 



1848. On the 26th of August a female, with a 

 young one (quite small), was captured at Drayton, near 

 Norwich. 



1851. On the 28th of August the Rev. E. W. 

 Dowell flushed a bevy of six or eight, on a farm at 

 Besthorpe, which had no doubt been bred in that 

 neighbourhood. They rose so close to him that he was 

 able to distinguish the cock bird. 



1850? Mr. Knights, a bird-stuffer in Norwich, in 



to extended cultivation, also expresses his surprise that under the 

 same conditions in England for the last half century, it should 

 have continued to decrease. This discrepancy, however, he accounts 

 for in the following terms : — " The slovenly system of farming, 

 unfortunately too common in Ireland, is, however, greatly in their 

 favour, as the seed of weeds amongst the stubbles supplies these 

 birds during winter, and at other seasons, with abundance of food." 



