QUAILS 237 



the stock. The Hungarian birds are usually delivered early in 

 January, turned down in pairs, a few couples at a time, not far 

 from a double hedge or covert, and are fed with grain for a short 

 time until they make themselves at home. 



Partridges are also hand-reared similarly to pheasants, except 

 that it is desirable to obtain small and light hens for sitting, tame 

 and used to handling bantams making good mothers. The 

 young partridges are carefully fed, at first on yolk of hard-boiled eggs 

 and about an equal quantity of partridge meal, mixed up like bread- 

 crumbs, after a time some biscuits may be added, and afterwards 

 a little prepared meat chopped fine. The little birds are sparingly 

 supplied with " ants' eggs/' and when old enough led up to grain- 

 feeding with good canary seed, and in due time the birds take to the 

 fields. 



QUAILS. Probably these, like partridges, compensate for any 

 damage done to crops by the pests they devour. Besides, shooters 

 and poachers give them so little quarter that they are never likely 

 to become notably injurious to cultivated crops. Fond of lucerne 

 and other leguminous herbage, they are sometimes taken by hair 

 nooses set in their tracks in lucerne fields, either secured to 

 pegs or lumps of well -worked clay. 



CAPERCAILZIE. So rare is this bird that it is never likely to be- 

 come injurious in the forest, though from its weight and habit of 

 feeding on the tender growth of trees it would probably prove 

 destructive if reared and maintained in such numbers as phea- 

 sants. 



BLACK COCK. This bird certainly compensates, by devouring 

 insects, for any damage inflicted on herbage in its native wilds. 



GROUSE. Feeding upon the tender growths of heather and 

 other moorland herbage and also destroying insects and other 

 pests, grouse hardly interfere with the pasturage for sheep. But 

 they love the leguminous herbage, and also the grain of the moor- 

 edge farmers, who, however, do not consider the grouse's depreda- 

 tions particularly hurtful. It is matter, nevertheless, for considera- 

 tion as to whether grouse w^ould not have to disappear in case of 

 the suitable parts of moorland being reclaimed for arboricultural, 

 agricultural, and horticultural purposes. 



WILD DUCK. In its wild state no objection can be taken to 

 the mallard and nest of the duck family, inasmuch as throughout 

 the year good service is rendered on both water nd land by the 

 destruction of pests, it being only in harvest -time that the ducks 

 trouble the farmer, and then only on laid corn and stubbles. The 

 only advantage the farmer derives from ducks is the destruction 

 of such pests as slugs, for in most cases the resorts of the creatures 

 that roam over his fields and crops and derive no small share of 

 their subsistence therefrom are not his to do as he may desire. 

 This is where the evil comes in in respect of all wild animals 



