110 WARWICK W(X)DLANDS. 



good easy covert all about, and we can mark our birds down 

 easily; now, when I find one bevy, I shall get as many 

 barrels into it as I can, mark it down as correctly as 

 possible, and then go and look for another." 



"What! and not follow it up? Now, Harry, that's 

 mere stuff; wait till the scent's gone cold, and till the 

 dogs can't find them? 'Gad, that's clever, any way!" 



"Exactly the reverse, friend Frank; exactly the reverse. 

 If you follow up a bevy, of quail mark you, on the instant, 

 it's ten to one almost that you don't spring them. If, on 

 the contrary, you wait for half an hour, you are sure of 

 them. How it is, I cannot precisely tell you. I have 

 sometimes thought that quail have the power of holding 

 in their scent, whether purposely or naturally — from the 

 effect of fear perhaps contracting the pores, and hindering 

 the escape of the effluvia — I know not, but I am far from 

 being convinced even now that it is not so. A very good 

 sportsman, and true friend of mine, insists upon it that 

 birds give out no scent except from the feet, and that, 

 consequently, if they squat without running they cannot 

 be found. I do not, however, believe the theory, and hold 

 it to be disproved by the fact that dead birds do give out 

 scent. I have generally observed that there is no difficulty 

 in retrieving dead quail, but that, wounded, they are con- 

 stantly lost. But, be that as it may, the birds pitch down, 

 each into the best bit of covert he can find, and squat 

 there like so many stones, leaving no trail or taint upon 



the grass or bushes, and being of course proportionally 

 hard to find; in half an hour they will begin, if not dis- 

 turbed, to call and travel, and you can hunt them up, 

 without the slightest trouble. If you have a very large 

 tract of country to beat, and birds are very scarce, of 

 course it would not answer to pass on ; nor ever, even if 

 they are plentiful, in wild or windy weather, or in large 

 open woods; but where you have a fair ground, lots of 

 birds, and fine weather. I would always beat on in a 

 circuit, for the reason I have given yovi. In the first 

 place, every bevy you flush flies from its feeding to its 

 basking ground, so that you get over all the first early, 

 and knoiv where to look afterward ; instead of killing off 

 one bevy, and then going blundering on, at blind guess 

 work, and finding nothing. In the second place, you have 



