THE MASSENA QUAIL. 
(Cyrtonyx Massena.) 
HIS beautiful species is said to 
be by far the most gentle and 
unsuspicious of our quails, and 
will permit a very close ap- 
proach by man, showing little or no 
fear of what most animals know so 
well to be their most deadly enemy. 
While feeding they keep close together, 
and constantly utter a soft clucking 
note, as though talking to one another. 
This species is about the size of the 
eastern variety. Its head is ornamented 
with a beautifully full, soft occipital 
crest. The head of the male is singu- 
larly striped with black and white. 
The female is smaller and is quite dif- 
ferent in color, but may be recognized 
by the generic characters. The tail 
is short and full, and the claws very 
large. 
The quail makes a simple nest on 
the ground, under the edge of some 
old log, or in the thick grass on the 
prairie, lined with soft and well-dried 
grass anda few feathers. From fifteen 
to twenty-four white eggs are laid. 
The female sits three weeks. The 
young brood, as soon as they are fairly 
out of the shell, leave the nest and 
seem abundantly strong to follow the 
parent, though they are no bigger than 
the end of one’s thumb—covered with 
down. The massena quail is an in- 
habitant of the western and south- 
western states, 
IN THE OLD LOG HOUSE. 
BY BERTHA SEAVEY 
HE big orchard on the Triggs 
| place was also the old orchard. 
Grandpa Triggs had planted it 
long ago in his young days when 
the country was new. The year before 
he had hauled logs from yonder forest 
with his ox-team and built the strong 
little house that still stands at the foot 
of the orchard. 
He brought young crab trees, too, 
and set them all about the house and 
though, after the orchard was started, 
he often threatened to cut them down, 
he never did it and they grew into a 
tangle of friendship and _ protection 
until the little one-roomed house was 
nearly hidden. 
The house was desolate now. The 
catbirds built their nests in the crotches 
of the crabs and the jays came over 
from the woods across the river and 
quarreled with them. An old zigzag 
rail fence separated the orchard from 
the hay-field at one end and a tall 
uncared-for osage hedge did scant 
158 
SAUNIER. 
duty at two sides. Once in a great 
while a sheep would leave the after- 
math and step through the wide spaces 
of the hedge and, entering the doorless 
house, would walk curiously about and 
then return. But that was all—no, not 
quite all. The children built fires in 
the great fireplace and roasted potatoes 
or experimented at cooking carrots, 
artichokes, apples and occasionally a 
pair of kidneys rolled each in several 
thicknesses of brown paper and slowly 
cooked under the hot ashes and coals. 
To be sure, the smoke came out into the 
room and got into the children’s eyes 
and passed out at the door—for the 
chimney had crumbled to half its old 
time height—but the playtimes went on 
in spite of that and the birds shouted 
and sang outside. 
One would expect that all this activ- 
ity above board to be happily interested 
without looking for new and startling 
circumstances under ground. But, 
withal, life went on among the “‘under- 
