FAMILY Tetraonide, 
will prove, for he says: ‘‘ Familiar as I have been with 
almost all parts of Vermont for more than thirty years, 
I have seen only one Quail in the State, and he was evi- 
dently a ‘tramp.’” 
Mr. Ned Dearborn writes_in his Birds of Durham, 
N. H.: ‘‘ While the Quail is a permanent resident, its 
numbers vary greatly from year to year. In the fall of 
1897 they were plentiful, not less than fifty living within 
a radius of two miles of the college. Comparatively 
few were shot, yet in the spring they were nearly all 
gone, and for the next two years they were scarce. In 
1900 they were fully as abundant as in 1897.” He also 
writes in his Birds of Belknap Co., N. H., that Tilton is 
‘¢ about the northern limit of the Quail’s range.” 
The habits of the birds are, to say the least, peculiar. 
Descend suddenly upon a mother with her chicks and 
she immediately goes crazy, leaves her offspring (which 
at once scatters for cover), and proceeds to flop along the 
ground as though injured, all the while uttering alarm- 
notes and frightened chirps! But this is done mostly 
for effect; if it distracts the mind of the intruder, so 
much the better chance for escape ; and truth to tell, in 
less than three seconds there is not a trace of mother or 
chicks in the neighborhood. In case a covey of mature 
birds are scattered, for quite a while afterward one 
may hear them calling themselves together again by 
peculiarly expressive minor notes singularly like those of 
young chickens. They usually roost on some little hillock 
in pasture or field, in a closely nuddled group, tails in 
and heads out; in this position, so admirably adapted 
for defence, a charge by the enemy is often repulsed 
with success and brought to utter confusion. The sud- 
den whirr and flap of a lot of wings is no ordinary thing 
to face ; it would unnerve even the crafty fox, and one 
may easily imagine him creeping unguardedly upon what 
—to quote Mr. Chapman’s excellent description—will 
shortly prove to be ‘‘a living bomb whose explosion i# 
scarcely less startling than that of dynamite.” 
