AND NEIGHBOUBHOOD. oil 



myself for some sixty years, and died some thirty 

 years ago, having nearly attained his hundredth year, 

 assuring us that in his youth several broods or bevies 

 of Quails were to be annually met with on various 

 farms belonging to us. In our own shooting experi- 

 ence in the county, we never had the good fortune to 

 meet with a bevy, but now and then used to find 

 one or tw^o of these birds on the manors of Pilton, 

 Wadenhoe, Aldwincle, and Tichmarsh in September, 

 and on several occasions met with what our people 

 would call " a hodd un " in the depth of winter, one 

 of these latter cases occurred in rather a curious 

 manner, as follows : — In the severe frost and snow of 

 January 1855, we were searching for Snipes along a 

 partially open brook, with a strong and high double 

 thorn-fence on the far side from us ; a Snipe rose at 

 a short distance and fell dead to our shot into the 

 middle of the said fence. We sent our old retriever 

 to fetch the bird, and after some difficulty in working 

 her way into the fence, we heard her make a rush 

 and cried " Ware Rabbit ! " but in a few seconds she 

 came struggling back to us through the thorns with 

 a Quail alive and uninjured in her mouth, and then 

 went in a second time and brought out the Snipe to 

 us quite dead. In July 1870, two Quails' nests were 

 mown out in our meadows near Thorpe, and the eggs 

 brought to us, and Mr. F. Bruce Simson of Broom 

 Hill, Spratton, has very kindly informed me that in 

 the summer of 1880 he frequently heard the unmis- 

 takable call of this species near his house, and 

 shot several in the neighbourhood in the following 

 September. A Quail was shot on September 1st, 

 1882, in a field of standing beans near Lowick. The 

 Quail loves cultivation, but prefers the ancient style 



