THE QUAIL. 125 



became apparently well pleased with her new residence, 

 where she remained the whole of that day and night, and 

 part of the next ; then she was seen no more ; whether 

 she was killed, or sacrificed her offspring to the fears for 

 her own safety, I know not ; but after waiting till night- 

 fall, without seeing or hearing from her, I took the fifteen 

 young Quails under my own care. They bore the closest 

 possible resemblance to, and had all the manners of chick- 

 ens, the same chirp, and, in a day or two, the same way 

 of pecking when let into the yard. Their food, for the 

 first day or two, was given them in small pills, of the size 

 of a pea, and consisted of dough ; in three days from the 

 time they were taken, they fed themselves in the manner 

 of fowls ; one, the largest, and apparently the oldest, act- 

 ing as leader or father of the flock, which they followed 

 as young chic sens do a mother. Their extreme youth 

 when taken, and the manner of their bringing up, had ob- 

 literated all recollection of their mother, and destroyed all 

 fear of man, they ran to me at the sound of my voice as 

 they would to the call of their own parent. I kept them 

 now in a box lined with raw cotton : they grew and pros- 

 pered wonderfully, being extremely lively, ancLalways 

 washing and dressing themselves when the sun was warm, 

 and being much tamer than young chickens. I kept them 

 in this way for six weeks, till the nights became quite 

 cool, when, it being impossible to supply the natural 

 warmth of their mother by cotton, one cold night killed 

 eight of them. I then placed the box on a warm stove, 

 which would preserve the heat during the day, and the 

 early part of the night ; but it being impossible to keep it 

 exactly regulated all night, the cold again affected them, 

 and one by one they died. If I had taken them in the 

 spring, instead of the fall, I have no doubt my experiment 

 would have succeeded. 



