THE QUAIL 221 



they recuperate and regain their usual plumpness after 

 the long and wearying flight of migration. 



Although the quail is one of the most unsociable, 

 and, as before mentioned, pugnacious of the great gallin- 

 aceous family, it would be hard to find a better or more 

 patient mother than is the female. As an example of 

 the close-sitting propensities of the bird, we remember 

 having fed from the hand a hen quail as she sat on her 

 nest of thirteen eggs, on the outskirts of a small covert 

 near Sherborne in Dorsetshire. Within six weeks of 

 leaving the shell the young ones are full grown. The 

 cocks do not, however, assume their full mature plumage 

 until the second year. In some parts of the country this 

 bird is called by the bucoHc ornithologist " wet-me-lips," 

 on account of the strange three-syllabled call of the 

 cock, which sounds not unlike " wet-me-lips." The first 

 record of quail being eaten as food is given in Exodus. 

 BibHcal history does not, however, tell of the manner in 

 which the Israelites dressed the game which flew to them 

 so providentially and in such numbers. We know that 

 the followers of Moses had neither vine leaves nor fat 

 bacon within which to roll the dainty morsels before 

 setting them down to roast ; nor did they serve them on 

 toast, for not a loaf of bread was to be bought in the 

 camp for love or money. In Numbers we read that the 

 Israelites " dried the quail round about the camp " ; 

 but then it is easy to imagine that even sun-dried quail 

 would very soon pall on the appetite. In England the 

 quail graces the table of the well-to-do classes only, for 



