7 18 liKl'OKI' OF StaTK (jEOLOtilST. 



ail) other one cause, except the severe winters, we may charge the 

 destruction of these beautiful birds. In the more thickly settled por- 

 tions of the State, in the neighborhood of large cities, and in the 

 vicinity of Chicago, where boys with firearms and target guns range 

 the coimtry, and at certain seasons of the year men take up the cus- 

 tom, shooting at all sorts of birds, killing many and scaring the others 

 away, l>obvvhitcs and all other game birds can scarcely be seen. Mr. 

 Tarkcr in tonus me it is very rare in Cook County, 111., and Mt. L. T. 

 Meyer said, in 18S(), in Lake County, Ind., they were rapidly becom- 

 ing extinct. Jn both these counties they were formerly very common. 

 Mr. Meyer speaks of them being so tame, they formerly came about 

 the farm buildings and roosted with the chickens. A succession of 

 hard winters or one of unusual severity sometimes reduces their num- 

 bers very low. Tlie winter of 1878-79 they were almost exterminated 

 by reason of the severe weather and their inability to procure food. 

 Ill tlie spring whole covies were found dead where they had huddled 

 together and frozen. Few were found for several years thereafter. 

 They were slow to recover from the effects of that winter. From 

 1884-5, I'rof. Evermann says they were rare in Carroll County, where 

 tliey were formerly abundant. During the winter of those years he 

 estimates that he did not see 100 quail in the county. (The Auk, Oc- 

 tober, 1888, p. 349.) The years 1890-91 they were more numerous, in 

 southern Indiana, at least, and I doubt not throughout the State, than 

 they had been prior to the winter of 1878-9. The year 1892 and the 

 succeeding winter, over the northern two-thirds of the State, at least, 

 was very unfavorable to them. The spring and early summer of that 

 year, the more level and little-drained land of northern Indiana was to 

 a gri'ater or less extent submerged, and their nests were washed away 

 and their eggs spoiled by water and, many places, they were prevented 

 from nesting. June 17, 1892, Mr. Ruthven Deane wrote me the 

 Kankiikee region had then been practically under water for two 

 months, and that it had been a hard season on quail. He thought the 

 majority of their nests had been destroyed. The winter following this 

 was (|uite severe, and throughout northern Indiana there was much 

 snow, the ground remaining covered a long time. From wherever I 

 liave reports, the destruction of Bobwhite is noted. Mr. M. W. 

 Salmon, of Xilmore, Clinton County, says "the few quails that sur- 

 vived the deep snow and cold of January (1893) were weak and be- 

 came a prey to Hawks, etc. They were almost annihilated. Of this 

 T'flrey and Wallace have also spoken (Proc. I. A. S., 1895, p. 69). 



About tlie middle of October I have noticed the Bobwhites of south- 

 ern Indiana begin to ilianije their habits. From the cheerful, matter- 



I 



