HOME SUPPLIES. 



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traps ; we have seen nine of the chubby fat tid-bits secured 

 at one shot, and eight caught at one time in a trap baited 

 with cow -peas; but usually the brown -bird collection is 

 made more slowdy. 



Next in value as a food-supply comes the dove, a larger 

 bird than the partridge and excellent for the table, but so 

 wild and quick to take alarm that it requires a cautious 

 gunner to creep near enough for a shot, and a quick and 

 skillful one to secure any reliable aim. Doves are ex- 

 tremely plentiful during the fall and winter months, flying 

 in large flocks of from fifty to a hundred, sitting close to- 

 gether on the ground, and rising at the same instant with 

 a rush and whirr of wings that is startling to the unsus- 

 pecting pedestrian. Rarely indeed is the dove caught in a 

 trap, for it is a wary bird, and not at all inquisitive as 

 to what manner of forage may be lying under a certain 

 tipped-up box ; partridges will march in, a whole covey 

 of them, to see what it may be, but the dove "never- 

 well, hardly ever!" 



The beautiful brown-coated, yellow-breasted, and black- 

 cravated meadow lark, spite of its gay plumage and sweet 

 little song, is lawful and frequent prey for the sportsman's 

 gun. There is not so much of him, when cooked, as there 

 is of the partridge and dove, but what there is is very 

 good and not to be despised. 



Then there are snipe of various kinds, rice-birds, tiny 

 little things, red -winged starlings, and a host of others, 

 all more or less desirable for the table. 



And then, if one wants beef and can't get it, there is 

 at hand a first-rate substitute, either for a stew, or, better 

 still, for soup-making : all one has to do is to go out in the 

 piney woods and there, on a sloping hill-side, he Avill find 

 the home of this subterranean beef-bearer— a small mound 

 of sand thrown out, and slanting downward from it at a 



