UPLAND SIIOOTINC;. 227 



This is, that under these circumstances, the birds will not rise 

 at iV], until they arc literally almost trodden upon. It was very 

 long- before I could hiiuL; niysi;ll" to believe in the existence of 

 this sino^ular power of .suj)pn'ssioii ; and very many times, after 

 liavinv; marketl down a bevy to a yard in favorable ground, and 

 haviiiu failrd to start them, I have left the place, concluding 

 tliat they had taken to the trees, ftr risen again unseen by me, 

 wlieii I am satisHcd, had I waited half an hour before proceed- 

 ing to heat lor tliem, 1 might have had good sport. I will here 

 observe, tliat although Quail do, beyond doubt, occasionally 

 take the tree, in (-ertain locaHties, and in some kinds of weather, 

 still so far as my experience goes, they do so rarely when pur- 

 sued, and then rather in consequence of some particular habit 

 of ;i single bevy, than of any natural instinct of the bird. 



(^iiic again — and I have done with the difficulties of finding — 

 particular bevies, endowed with that singular craft, which ap- 

 proaches so very nearly to reason, that it hardly can be distin- 

 guished therefrom, will fly when flushed, invariably for many 

 days and weeks in succession, to some one small out-of-the-way 

 nook, or clump of briars, so long as that nook is undiscovered, 

 thus liaffling all attempts to find them. 



In one instance, while shooting in the vale of Warwick, with 

 an old comrade, when returning home late in the evening, and 

 when within two hundred yards of his hospitable tavern, he said 

 he thought he could start a bevy by the stream side, where he 

 had observed that they often roosted. 



Accordingly we went to the place, and had not gone ten yards 

 into the bogs, before the Setters, of which we had three, all 

 came to their point simultaneously, and a large bevy of sixteen 

 or eighteen birds jumped up before them. We got in our four 

 barrels, and killed four birds handsomely ; and marked the 

 birds over the comer of a neighboring wood, lowering their 

 flight so rapidly, that we had no doubt of finding them on a 

 buckwheat stubble, surrounded by thick sumach bushes, and 

 briary hedges, which lay just beyond the grove. 



We hunted till it was quite dark, however, without moving 



