QUAILS. 



289 



up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and 

 they gathered the Quails : he that gathered least gathered ten 

 homers ; and they spread them all abroad for themselves round 

 about the camp" (Num. xi. 31, 32). 



Their coming with the wind, their immense quantities, 

 covering a circle of thirty or forty miles, and being spread in 

 the sun for drying, appeared so impossible to one of our most 

 learned commentators on the Bible,* that he was persuaded our 

 translation was incorre'ct, and that instead of Quails, locusts 

 were meant. *Here, however, we have the evidence of eye- 

 witnesses. " Near Constantinople, in the autumn, the sun is 



is^ 



The Quail. 



often nearly obscured by the prodigious flights of Quails, which 

 alight on the coasts of the Black Sea, near the Bosphorus, and 

 are caught by means of nets spread on high poles, planted 

 along the cliff, some yards from its edge, against which the 

 birds, exhausted by their passage over the sea, strike them- 

 selves and fall. In October 1829, the sultan sent orders to one 

 of his admirals to catch four hundred dozen. In three days 

 they were collected, and brought to him alive in small cages, "t 

 Another traveller % tells us that they visit Egypt in immense 

 nights about harvest-time, where the Arabs take them by 

 thousands in nets. They fly, he adds, in a direct line from 

 north to south, and very rarely from east to west With respect 



* Bishop Patrick. t SLADE'S Travels in Turkey, vol. i. 



Madden, vol. ii. 



