390 QUAIL-FIGHTS. [CHAP. x. 



The reader, having taken breath, shall now be sup- 

 plied with a less laborious mode of cooking them, for 

 which we are indebted to a high authority in such mat- 

 ters, and which is simply to roast them with a thin 

 piece of bacon tied over the breasts, the sauce the same 

 as for a roast pigeon, and with the accompaniment of fried 

 bread crumbs, as with a dish of Larks. The London 

 Quails are usually fatted on hemp-seed ; but rice, not too 

 much boiled, is the best food for them, as it makes their 

 flesh more delicate and less oily. The town-fed Quails 

 are probably better for the table than those taken wild, 

 except at certain seasons. Those we have eaten on the 

 Continent soon after their migration have been decidedly 

 dry. Such countless legions moving together must half- 

 starve each other, but when dispersed amidst an abund- 

 ance of any favourite food, they improve correspondingly 

 in condition; witness Captain Mundy in his amusing 

 Sketches in India : " In the cool of the afternoon we 

 strolled for an hour in the grain-fields, and shot several 

 brace of Quails, which, at this season, are like little 

 flying pats of butter! I have heard it averred that 

 these delicate bonnes- benches are sometimes so fat in 

 the grain-season, that, when they are shot, they burst, 

 from their own weight, as they fall on the parched 

 ground."* 



This excursion to the East brings us to the subject of 

 Quail-fighting, in which we are likely to be perplexed 

 by the circumstance that three species are made use of 

 by the Orientals to engage in single combat, viz. our 

 own common Quail; the Caille /raise, Coturnix excal/ac- 

 toria, or Hand-warming Quail, of Temminck, a small 



* Vol. i. p. 148. 



