292 THE COMMON QUAIL. 



" When a male without the female is allowed to run about the room, it 

 is always necessary to shut it up in June (the pairing season), or else its 

 ardent feelings tempt it to attack all the other birds, particularly those with 

 a dark plumage, somewhat resembling its own. Larks, for example, it 

 will follow, and pluck out their feathers till they are nearly bare. 



FOOD. In a wild state the quail feeds on wheat and other corn, rape- 

 seed, millet, hemp-seed, and the like. It also eats green vegetables, as 

 well as insects, and particularly ants' eggs. 



In the house it is fed on the same food, adding bread, barley meal mixed 

 with milk, the universal paste, and occasionally salad or cabbage chopped 

 up small, and, that it may want nothing to keep it in health, plenty of 

 /iver sand for it to roll in and to peck up grains, which assist its digestion ; 

 but this sand must be damp, for if dry it will not touch it. It drinks a 

 great deal, and the water, contrary to the opinion of some persons, should 

 be clear, never turbid. It moults twice in the year, once in autumn, and 

 again in spring ; it then requires river sand, and greater attention than at 

 other times. 



BREEDING. The quail breeds very late, never before July. Its nest, if 

 it can be called so, is a hole scratched in the earth, in which it lays from 

 ten to fourteen bluish-white eggs, with large brown spots. These are 

 hatched after three weeks' incubation. The young ones, all hairy, follow 

 the mother the moment they leave the shell. Their feathers grow quickly, 

 for in the autumn they are able to depart with her to the southern coun- 

 tries. The males are so ardent, that if one is placed in a room with a 

 female, he will pursue her immediately with extraordinary eagerness, 

 tearing off her feathers if she resists in the least; he is less violent if he 

 has been in the same room with her during the year. The female, in this 

 case, lays a great many eggs, but rarely sits on them ; yet if young ones 

 are brought her from the fields, she eagerly receives them under her wings, 

 and becomes a very affectionate mother to them. The young must be fed 

 on eggs boiled hard and cut small, but the best way is to take the mother 

 with the covey, which may be done with a net. She watches over them 

 attentively, and they are more easily reared. During the first year one 

 would think that all in the covey were females, the males resemble them 

 so much, particularly before the brown shows itself on the throat. 



MODE OF TAKING. There are several different methods of taking quails, 

 but I shall only mention the commonest and easiest. The male birds are 

 generally caught in a net, called a quail- net, by means of a call which 

 imitates the cry of the female in the breeding season ; it is the way adopted 

 by bird-catchers in the spring, when they wish to take a male that sings 

 in a superior manner, that is, which repeats a dozen times following the 

 syllables " pieveroie." If the male has not yet met with a mate, and if 

 he has not been rendered suspicious by some unskilful bird-catcher, he 

 will run eagerly into the snare. The most important thing is to have a 

 good call : they may be had cheap of turners at Nuremberg, who make 

 them of leather, with a pipe turned from the bone of a cat or hare, or the 

 leg of a stork ; but they may easily be made by any body. The first 

 thing necessary is a piece of calf-skin, one foot in length, and four inches 

 in breadth, the sides must be sewed together within two inches of the 



