228 Life and Immortality. 



poor birds find themselves in a prison from which they can- 

 not break out before they starve to death. The habit of 

 huddling is peculiar to Quails the whole year round. They 

 select at evening some spot of low ground, where the long 

 grass affords shelter and warmth, and there they encamp, 

 sleeping in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, with heads turned 

 out, keeping each other warm, and ready to escape at a 

 moment's warning without stumbling over one another. A 

 suitable roosting-place once found, night after night they 

 repair thither, leaving it in the morning before sunrise to 

 seek their breakfast. 



Unless the winter be unusually mild, they may be seen 

 associating in the pasture with the cattle, and even following 

 them home to glean the grain that falls into the barnyard, 

 and pick up the scraps that are thrown to the chickens. 

 This delightful confidence is not always abused, for many 

 persons take pains to foster the bevies they find spend- 

 ing the winter in some brushy hillside near the house 

 by daily scattering grain or clover-seed upon the snow 

 where the hungry birds may come and get it. The pert air 

 with which one of the cocks will perch himself on a fence- 

 rider or walk sedately along a stone wall in the early sun- 

 light of a glistening January morning is reward enough to 

 the benefactor, if he cares not to preserve them for the selfish 

 pleasure of shooting them the following autumn. 



As a delicate article of food the Quail is highly esteemed, 

 and during the time the law allows the markets are filled 

 with bunches of them. Various devices in the form of 

 snares, nets and traps are called into service to effect their 

 capture, and in some parts of the country, New England 

 especially, fresh importations have been necessary to pre- 

 serve a sufficient number for sport. Bands of beaters in the 

 Southern and Western States cautiously drive immense 

 flocks into nets, but there is less danger of exterminating 

 this than almost any other species of game-bird, it would 

 seem, on account of its sequestered habits and prolificacy. 



