QUESTION OF MIGRATION. 265 



quail ; and his country has better reason to be proud 

 of him than she has of many of her sons, who make 

 much more noise in the world than our favourite ' Bob 

 White.' 



' (The cry of the quail resembling these two words, 

 has caused him to be thus christened by the country 

 folk.) 



' ^Miile on this subject, I may observe, for the benefit 

 of our northern sportsmen — many of whom I have heard 

 state that the quail is not migratory — that everywhere 

 west of the Delaware, he is as distinctly a bird of 

 passage as the woodcock, and the farther west the more 

 palpably so. 



' Why he loves these habits with us of the Middle 

 States I cannot guess, nor has any naturalist so much as 

 alluded to the fact, which is nevertheless indisputable.' 



Whether stress of weather may render the quail 

 miofratorv in the Northern States or not I can neither 

 affirm or deny ; but that they are non-migratory in the 

 South I am quite sure, for when living on Matagorda 

 Prairie I had some scores of tame quail, w^bich were 

 always around my place, and would allow me to walk 

 close by them, and come to be fed like barn-door 

 fowls. I fancied I knew several of them on the same 

 principle as that by which a shepherd is able to dis- 

 tinguish the faces in his flock. 



The eggs are white, and vary in number from ten to 

 twenty : sometimes even twenty-five have been found 



