THE AMERICAN QUAIL. 259 



stubbles after harvest, so that while he in nothing dete- 

 riorates the harvest to be ingathered, he tends in the 

 highest degree to the preservation of clean and unweeded 

 fields and farms ; indeed, when it is taken into consider- 

 ation that each individual Quail consumes daily nearly 

 two gills of weed-seed, it will be at once evident that a 

 few bevies of these little birds, carefully and assiduously 

 preserved on a farm, will do more towards keeping it 

 free of weeds, than the daily annual labor of a dozen 

 farm servants. This preservation will not be counter- 

 acted or injured by a moderate and judicious use of the 

 gun in the autumnal months ; for the bevies need thin- 

 ning, especially of the cock-birds, which invariably out- 

 number the hens, and which, if unable to pair, from a 

 want of mates, form into little squads or companies of 

 males, which remain barren, and become the deadly 

 enemies of the young cocks of the following year, beat- 

 ing them off and dispersing th'em ; though, strange to 

 say, they will themselves never mate again, nor do aught 

 after remaining unpaired during one season, to propagate 

 their species. The use of the trap, on the contrary, 

 destroying whole bevies at a swoop, where the gun, even 

 in tire most skillful hands, rarely much more than deci- 

 mates them, may, in -a single winter's day, if many traps 

 be set, destroy the whole stocking of a large farm for 

 years, if not forever. I have myself invariably remark- 

 ed, since my attention was first called to the fact, that 

 those farms which are best stocked with Quail, are inva- 



