QUAIL SHOOTING 339 
local peculiarities of the different sections, utilizing 
such slight advantages as may offer, as hedges, fences, 
the cover with which most streams are fringed, or 
high weeds. 
The quail sadly needs cover for its protection, its 
destroyers being both of air and earth—hawks, foxes, 
cats, dogs—and the eggs, too, fall a prey to the rapa- 
cious appetites of some of its enemies. In the South 
the cur dogs of the negroes—every family owning one 
or more, all kept in a kind of half-famished condition— 
prowl through the fields seeking for food; they are 
the very worst of egg destroyers. Were the quail 
not so hardy and prolific, its fate would be swift, and 
extermination certain. 
The negroes’ dogs seem to be almost omnivorous. 
In the fall they may be seen making daily visits to 
some persimmon tree, under which they eat the fallen 
fruit with apparent relish. Those which have some 
claim to hound blood are not averse to making a meal 
in the corn field, on corn when it is in the milky stage. 
With such rapacious enemies to contend against, the 
destruction of the quail must be great, but in addi- 
tion to all that, many are trapped and netted, methods 
which destroy whole bevies at a time. 
But to return to the matter of the quail’s habitat: 
in certain parts of the South, as in the oak woods in 
sections of Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, or in the pine 
woods of Louisiana, Mississippi, etc., the quail may 
live wholly in the woods, food, always a first consid- 
eration, being there secured in abundance. 
