170 EEMINISCENCES OF A SPOETSMAN. 



fighting, and on these occasions considerable sums are 

 exchanged by the pai'ties backing their bird. 



When I was quartered with my regiment in the cita- 

 del of Messina, I had some excellent quail shooting for 

 about a fortnight in the spring, when these birds were on 

 their passage from Africa to the southern coast of Italy. 

 During this period the vineyards and gardens all 

 round Messina were, you might almost say, swarming 

 with quails, but it was really a service of some danger to 

 go in pursuit of them, for all classes in Messina down to 

 the lowest who could muster a gun and powder and shot 

 were bent on the destruction of these birds of passage, 

 •and two or three times I was very near being shot by the 

 Cockney sportsmen, and told them plainly that if they 

 were not more cautious in firing they should have the 

 contents of my two barrels. It is almost incredible, but 

 really a fact, that many thousands of quails are captured 

 within a few miles on the coast near Naples. There are 

 small towers erected on the shore at small distances 

 from each other, to which lai'ge nets are fixed, and I 

 have seen in a work on the subject of quails that one 

 hundred thousand have been caught in those nets in the 

 course of a fortnight. The Neapolitan Bishop of the 

 Lipari Islands derives the greater part of his in- 

 come from a small tax on the quails imported from 

 these islands to Naples and other parts of Italy. In 

 Grascony, particularly all round the vicinity of Bordeaux 

 and Libourne, a great number of quails are captured by 

 means of the quail-pipe in the spring; they are then 

 fattened in cages, and may be purchased for about six- 

 pence each. As you walk in the streets you may hear 

 them calling to each other. 



In the south of Spain, in the province of Andalusia, 



