QUAIL 



Britain, two hundred years ago, most country gentlemen 

 possessed a quail pipe — such as is in use even now in 

 South Europe — for the purpose of decoying these birds. 



No naturalist can deny the truth, as well as the 

 beauty, of various passages from the Bible. The 

 references to quails are singularly descriptive, and 

 prove that the Israelites were well acquainted with 

 the migrations of these birds. In the sixteenth chapter 

 of Exodus they are thus referred to: "And it came 

 to pass that at even the quails came up, and covered the 

 camp." In the eleventh chapter of Numbers the 

 migration is thus finely described: ''And there went 

 forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from 

 the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a 

 day's journey on this side, round about the camp, and 

 as it were two cubits high. And the people stood up 

 all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, 

 and they gathered the quails : he that gathered least 

 gathered ten homers : and they spread them all abroad 

 for themselves round about the camp." The reference 

 to quails lying as thick as two cubits high during this 

 great flight may be put down to Eastern exaggeration. 

 But the children of Israel may well have seen, and 

 evidently did see, some vast migrations of quails during 

 their long wanderings. 



I never quite realised how overpoweringly strong is 

 the migratory instinct until I saw in South Africa some 

 caged quails at the period of their return migration. 

 At this time, after night had fallen, these birds would 

 repeatedly fly up against the bars of their cage in the 

 attempt to escape, and this although they had been per- 

 fectly quiet all day and were fairly tame. The migratory 

 passages of quails are, I think, beyond doubt, made 

 chiefly at night, and there was no question that these 

 caged birds were more anxious to make their flights on 



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