MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



Quails are the younger brothers of the 

 partridge group ; but, unlike most of their 

 kind, they are gregarious and migratory. 

 They spend their winters in the south, as 

 is the wont of fashionable invalids, and come 

 northward with the spring, in quest of cooler 

 quarters. Myriads of them cross the Medi- 

 terranean from Africa with the early sciroccos, 

 and descend upon Calabria and the Bay of 

 Naples in those miraculous flights which 

 Browning has immortalized in " The English- 

 man in Italy." Quail-netting is then a 

 common industry of the country about Sor- 

 rento and Amalfi ; thousands of the pretty 

 little gray-and-buff birds are sent to market 

 daily, with their necks wrung, and their 

 beautiful banded heads, " specked with white 

 over brown like a great spider's back," all 

 dead and draggled. Many of the flocks 

 stop on during the season among the vine- 

 yards in Italy ; but other and more ad- 

 venturous hordes, tired of southern slugs 

 and fat southern beetles, wing their way 



54 



