

Quail. 337 



it in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Indeed, of the three specimens 

 now in my collection, the first I procured in the flesh at the 

 market of the Pantheon, at Rome, and it was admirably stuffed 

 by an Otaheite girl, the only taxidermist then in the Eternal 

 City ; and the others I shot on the banks of the Nile, within the 

 tropics, in Nubia. I also found it very abundant in Portugal, 

 where Montagu long since remarked that they remain through- 

 out the year, and even says, on the authority of Captain Latham, 

 though I am inclined to think erroneously, that they are more 

 plentiful in that country in winter than in summer. In Egypt, 

 too, it is often found in great numbers, and though not con- 

 sidered sacred and never embalmed, it may be distinctly recog- 

 nised in the bird-catching scenes on the walls of the tombs at 

 Beni Hassan and at Thebes, so that it can prove its title to a 

 settlement in Egypt of over three thousand years. 



It is of so pugnacious a disposition that it was kept by the 

 Greeks and Romans, as it is at this day by the Chinese, for the 

 express purpose of fighting, after the manner of our game-cocks. 

 Of plump form and of self-asserting manners, the Quail may 

 well be designated a diminutive Partridge. Its flesh, too, is 

 equally good for the table ; and it is a benefactor to man by 

 consuming the seeds of many weeds. Its eggs are perhaps more 

 richly coloured than those of any other bird which breeds in this 

 country, the ground colour yellowish-orange, freely blotched and 

 speckled with rich dark brown. Whether the males are poly- 

 gamous, as Yarrell asserted, or whether they pair, as Howard 

 Saunders, Gould, and other eminent ornithologists think, is at 

 present uncertain ; but that both parent birds are undaunted in 

 defence of their young brood is generally admitted. Among 

 Continental ornithologists the Quail is often designated by the 

 specific name of dactylisonans, and we are told that it is so 

 called from the shrill triple note of the male, which soon makes 

 itself heard in the evenings on the bird's arrival. That cry to 

 the German peasant seems to say Buck' den Ruck, ( Bend your 

 back ;' to the inhabitant of the south of France, J'ai du He, j'ai 

 pas de sd (sac), or in Provence by Tres (trois) per un, tres per 



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