QUAIL SHOOTING. 109 



to tlie snipe and woodcock. It is met with singly, no 

 doubt, but where one is, you may be sure there are 

 more not far off; while veiy often one woodcock is all 

 that fifty acres will furnish, with the closest beating 

 of the cover. With our savoury recollections of this 

 feathered 'bonne houche, we are unwilling to surrender 

 it to the calumnies of those fcAv who have thought it 

 even worthy their ill favour. " Quails," says the author 

 of " Rural Sports," " seldom form themselves into 

 coveys, except when their wants unite the feeble 

 family to their mother ; or some powerful cause urges 

 at once the whole species to assemble and traverse 

 together the extent of the ocean, holding their course 

 to the same distant land : but this forced association 

 does not subsist after then- alighting, and finding 

 in their adopted country that they can live at all. 

 The appetite of love is their only tie, and even this is 

 momentaiy : so soon as passion has spent its force, 

 the male abandons his mate to the labour of raising 

 the family; the young quails are hardly full grown 

 w^hen they separate, or, if kept together, fight ob- 

 stinately, and their quarrels are terminated only by 

 their mutual destruction." It must be confessed 

 this is no amiable character of om' quariy, and be- 

 longs to its natural (or rather unnatural) history, 

 more than its sporting treatment. But the fact is, 

 quail shooting is not legitimately a branch of English 

 shooting. 



The Common Quail {Tetrao coturnix). — The quail 

 seems to be a more permanent resident of Ireland 



