QUAIL, BOBWHITE, PARTRIDGE 55 



birds plentiful. He was accompanied by his brother, 

 and they had a brace of good dogs. They hunted for 

 hours without the sign of a bird, and could not account 

 for the apparent scarcity. At last their dogs made 

 game, but before they could establish a point the birds 

 commenced getting up all around and in front of them. 

 They were confident that there were from 70 to 100 

 birds, and instead of their taking the usual quail flight, 

 they rose clear up in the air like a flock of pigeons, and 

 went away for half a mile. . They followed the line, 

 which was in an open country, and found a few scat- 

 tered birds in an old cotton field, fully the distance 

 named from where the birds took their flight. They 

 gave up finding more, and started again; and after a 

 prolonged tramp they had a duplicate of their first ex- 

 perience, finding a second flock or drove not a bevy, 

 for they say there were nearly a hundred. Like the 

 former they made an immense flight. 



"Now, I know that it is common for the grouse in 

 Scotland to pack, occasionally the English partridges 

 do, and our prairie chickens ; but I never saw or heard 

 of quail doing so before." 



On this report S. T. Hammond, referring to the 

 year 1852, commented as follows : 



"In Iowa thirty-eight years ago, when crossing 

 through a piece of woods from one prairie to another, 

 we came upon a clearing of two or three acres of wheat 

 stubble, and a large drove of quail got up, at least 200 

 or 300, but they scattered in every direction. To this 

 day we can see that clearing and how the quail filled 



