QUAIL-SHOOTING. IOI 



days old, although he may have seen the whole covey 

 alight but a short distance before him. The proba- 

 bilities are that, after a tedious hunt, he will give up 

 without finding the first one. During this chase the 

 old cock will most likely be cutting up his pranks, 

 running about as if with a broken wing, and luring 

 the tyro away from the locality of the brood, which 

 madame quail is meanwhile working off in another 

 direction. It is wonderful to see the sagacity and tact 

 exhibited by this bird and the partridge while rearing 

 their brood, and to see with what astonishing quickness 

 every chick disappears when any sudden danger comes. 



In warm summer evenings you will often hear the 

 old cock whistling from the top of a fence or high 

 rock. His whistle is said by farmers to give the words 

 "more wet " ; and it is certainly a very sweet note, and 

 very difficult to imitate well. 



The quail has many enemies, the fox, the mink, the 

 weasel, and other animals. At night they roost in a 

 circle on the ground, with their heads outward, in 

 order to be on their guard against their foes. But 

 their greatest destroyer, — one which often kills 

 them by wholesale, — is the heavy snow in cold 

 winters. For the quail is not entirely a migratory 

 bird, like the woodcock. They do not give up in an 

 ordinary snow-storm, although entirely covered, but 

 will manage to work up through pretty deep snow," if 

 it be new and light. But heavy and continued snow- 

 storms, like those of the winter .of 1866-67, often 

 cover them too deeply for them to get out ; and when 

 the snow is followed, as is frequently the case, by a 



