104 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



be, some fire bevies ; there is good covert, good easy covert all 

 about, and we can mark our birds down easily ; now, when I 

 find one bevy, I shall get as many barrels into it as I can, mark 

 it down as correctly as possible, and then go and look for 

 another." 



" What ! and not follow it up ? Now, Harry, that's mere 

 stuff; wait till the scent's gone cold, and till the dogs can't 

 find them ? 'Gad, that's clever, any way !" 



" Exactly the reverse, friend Frank ; exactly the reverse. If 

 you follow up a bevy, of quail mark you, on the instant, it's 

 ten to one almost that you don't spring them. If, on the con- 

 trary, you wait for half an hour, you are sure of them. How 

 it is, I cannot precisely tell you. I have sometimes thought 

 that quail have the power of holding in their scent, whether 

 purposely or naturally from the effect of fear perhaps con- 

 tracting the pores, and hindering the escape of the effluvia I 

 know not, but I am far from being convinced even now that it 

 is not so. A very good sportsman, and true friend of mine, 

 insists upon it that birds give out no scent except from the feet, 

 and that, consequently, if they squat without running they can- 

 not be found. I do not, however, believe the theory, and hold 

 it to be disproved by the fact that dead birds do give out scent, 

 I have generally observed that there is no difficulty in retrieving 

 dead quail, but that, wounded, they are constantly lost. But, 

 be that as it may, the birds pitch down, each into the best bit 

 of covert he can find, and squat there like so many stones, leav- 

 ing no trail or taint upon the grass or bushes, and being of 

 course proportionally hard to find ; in half an hour they will 

 begin, if not disturbed, to call and travel, and you can hunt 

 them up, without the slightest trouble. If you have a very 

 large tract of country to beat, and birds are very scarce, of 

 course it would not answer to pass on ; nor ever, even if they 

 are plentiful, in wild or windy weather, or in large open woods ; 

 but where you have a fair ground, lots of birds, and fine weath- 

 er, I would always beat on in a circuit, for the reason I have 

 given you. In the first place, every bevy you flush flies from 

 its feeding to its basking ground, so that you get over all the 

 first early, and know where to look afterward; instead of killing 

 off one bevy, and then going blundering on, at blind guess 

 work, and finding nothing. In the second place, you have a 

 chance of driving two or three bevies into one brake, and of 

 getting sport proportionate ; and in the third place, as I have 



