ACCLIMATIZATION IN AMERICA. 339 



the requirements that the sportsman demands, being 

 swift of wing, emitting a fair scent, laying well to 

 dogs, and frequenting open arable, or brush-covered 

 ground, where your setters and pointers can always 

 be viewed at their work, and no impediment to inter- 

 fere with your aim. In my belief, your common quail 

 is a very hard bird to hit, much more so than a snipe, 

 for the reason that you can never get them sufficiently 

 elevated over the ground (with which their colour so 

 admirably harmonizes) as to see them against the sky 

 over the barrel of your gun. At times, in the Levant, 

 Malta, and the Sicilies, it has made me savage to see 

 an oily, garlic-smelling, picturesque, but entirely un- 

 desirable native, with a ten-dollar gun, and a pinch of 

 powder and shot in it for a load, knocking over bird 

 after bird as fast as he could stow them in his be- 

 fringed and gorgeously-ornamented game bag. You 

 can see some queer-looking gunners out in the 

 Western States, but they would not be in it as to rig, 

 if you clapped them alongside of one of these South 

 of Europe brigand-looking, swarthy-complexioned 

 humans. 



Of course, you are well aware that we have innu- 

 merable sportsmen's clubs in America, and some of 

 these institutions are rich and quite lavish with their 

 funds when their money can be laid out advan- 

 tageously. Now, what I would advise them to do, 

 especially those near the Atlantic seaboard, is to fence 

 off a space of several acres of thick-bottomed grass 

 land, or ground cropped with oats or barley, and into 

 each of these enclosures turn, say, a thousand brace of 

 quail. If such corals were established in New Jersey, 

 Maryland, Eastern Virginia, and Long Island, and 

 the birds retained captive till the breeding season was 

 over, and then gradually permitted to escape, I am 

 convinced that a big success could be made in accli- 

 matization, so I thoroughly agree with you on 

 this question. Four thousand quails at is. a brace 



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