QUAIL 



that the vast spring migrations from North Africa and 

 Asia through Southern Europe are steadily diminish- 

 ing. For ages quails have been captured by the various 

 European peoples bordering upon the Mediterranean 

 in numbers that are perfectly astonishing. The island 

 of Capri, especially, has been renowned for a thousand 

 years and more for the prodigious flights of quails 

 netted there, and the wealth of the island is consider- 

 ably augmented by the sale of captured birds. The 

 quails begin to arrive in April, and continue to pass 

 northward until the middle of May. The season lasts 

 for about three weeks, and during that period in a 

 good migration about 150,000 quails were, sixty or 

 eighty years ago, taken at Capri alone. The birds are 

 taken almost entirely by means of nets. At the present 

 day a fair catch of quails in Capri during the April 

 migration is estimated at about 30,000 to 40,000 birds. 

 It is at once apparent that the falling off from 150,000 

 birds, at which the spring captures within one small 

 area were computed some seventy years ago, is a very 

 serious one, and partially accounts for the diminished 

 numbers observed of late years in Britain. This system 

 of netting takes place all along the Mediterranean : it 

 has no doubt increased with the general increase in 

 population, and the decrease in the number of quails 

 captured, observable in Capri, extends to most other 

 places where these birds are taken. Even such pro- 

 lific creatures as quails can scarcely be expected for 

 ever to contend successfully against this annual drain 

 upon their legions. Yet they exhibit astonishing 

 powers of recuperation, and occasionally reappear in 

 their ancient haunts in marvellous abundance. 



During the April migration the birds arrive in the 

 South of Europe in but poor condition. They are 

 mostly captured alive, for the reason that a live quail is 



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