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seen hurrying across the road ahead of approaching teams. 

 The winter was moderately mild until February, when one even- 

 ing came a heavy fall of snow and the thousands of bobwhites, 

 out battling with the elements, burrowed to the bottom of the 

 snow-banks for warmth and shelter. 



During the night the wind shifted and a rain and sleet set 

 in. In a short time the tunnels were covered with the drifting 

 snow, and by morning a thick hard crust of ice imprisoned the 

 little bands of living pulsing creatures. A new. experience now 

 confronts them and they huddle close together. Their world 

 has narrowed to small proportions, but they are warm and 

 comfortable, and the first day passes with little inconvenience. 

 But prison without succor means death, and slowly but surely 

 the little flocks succumb to the pangs of hunger. With horns 

 of plenty all about them, they gradually starve, and not until 

 the warm spring winds unlock the prison doors, do we behold 

 the awful results pf nature's tragedy. 



The bobwhite army quickly recovers, however, from these 

 terrible reverses, and two or three good seasons are sufficient to 

 restore them to their former numbers, as they rapidly multiply. 

 If the sumer season be dry and favorably, two sets of eggs 

 will be deposited, and each female will bring forth two broods 

 averaging fifteen chicks each.. The first brood will hatch in 

 late May, and the secojnd in early July. Twenty chicks of the 

 thirty should arive at maturity, and if the winter season be not 

 of the quail killing sort, a dozen should sui-vive its rigors, 

 leaving seven pairs to begin the following season. Computing 

 by compound interest, these seven pairs should increase to 606 

 birds by the third season. With one pair of quails on each 

 section of land, one township should furnish the enormous 

 number of 21,816 birds in three productive seasons. 



Is it not plain that without the intervention of nature, quails 

 would soon become more numerous than the grasshoppers in 

 the fields, and in the course of events would prove a serious 

 menace to the harvests? 



But nature does not need the help of man in her work of 

 reducing the over supply to normal conditions, and when man 



