22G FRANK FORESTER S FIELD SPORTS. 



from personal experience, or have heard from others more com- 

 petent to pronounce on the subject, the Quail is the most diffi- 

 cult both to find and to kill with certainty. 



Bred in the open fields, and feeding early in the morning, 

 and late in the afternoon, on buckwheat and other grain stub- 

 bles, during all the rest of the day, the bevies lie huddled up to- 

 gether in little knots, either in some small thorny brake, or 

 under the covert of the grassy tussocks in some bog meadow. 



The small compass that each bevy occupies, while thus indo- 

 lently digesting their morning meal, renders it very easy for the 

 best dogs to pass within six yards of them, without discovering 

 their whereabout ; and, consequently, even where the country 

 is well stocked with bevies, it is not an uncommon thing to toil 

 a whole day through, without raising one-half the birds which 

 have fed in the morning on your range. 



Again, when flushed in the open, these birds immediately fly 

 to the thickest and most impenetrable covert they can find ; and 

 in some sections of the country in which I have shot, Maryland 

 especially, that covert is of such a nature, so interwoven with 

 parasitic creepers, cat briars, and wild vines, and so thickly set 

 with knotted and thorny brushwood, that they can run with im- 

 punity before the noses of your Pointers or Setters, and that, 

 without the aid of cocking Spaniels, which are little used in the 

 United States, they cannot be forced to take wing. 



These birds have another singular quality, which renders 

 them exceedingly difficult to find, even when they have been ac- 

 curately marked down after being once flushed. It is, that for 

 some considerable time after they have alighted, they give forth 

 no scent whatsoever, and that the very best dogs will fail to give 

 any sign of their presence. 



Whether this retention of scent is voluntary on the part of the 

 bird, it is very difficult to ascertain. It is a very strange power, 

 ; if it be voluntary, yet not more strange than many others of the 

 '" instincts possessed by wild animals. 



There is one thing which would lead to the conclusion that it 

 is voluntary, or at least that the bird is conscious of the fact. 



