106 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



me once, as keen as mustard, but the first quail he picked 

 up disappeared down his throat — beak, legs, feathers and all! 



Above all things the quail likes a dry place on which 

 to bask. You may find hin in a marsh, but not in its 

 mud. You will also find him in cold weather in the most 

 sheltered corner of a field, or at any rate on the sunny side 

 of one of the raised pathways which divide fields in China. 

 Crisp feathery grass is a temptation, as is the fluffy stuff which 

 one finds here and there in the winter fields connected with 

 certain kinds of seeds. For the market, great numbers are 

 trapped or taken in nets, and sent in alive. Formerly 

 Shanghai shooting matches were at quails instead of pigeons, 

 but I do not remember one during the last fifteen or twenty 

 years, and a good thing too. The clay "pigeon" serves the 

 purpose from a sporting point of view equally well, and even 

 better, and there no longer remainsthat disagreeable uneasines 

 which worriesmodern man when he kills unnecessarily. Even 

 the tiger, he remembers, never kills for mere sport. To the 

 Chinese, the quail is all that the game cock — or in fact any 

 cock — is to the Manila man, something which appeals to the 

 taste for blood and at the same time allows of unlimited 

 betting. We must not condemn too readily that of which we 

 have ourselves been guilty. Cockfighting has been put down 

 by law in England only since our fathers can remember, and 

 quail fighting will continue in China for many a decade yet. 

 But one is sorry for the bird : sorry that his tenacity, his pluck, 

 andhisgameness generally should not be put to better purpose. 



Besides the common quail there are in China the Japanese 

 quail, a slightly different species, and the so-called Chinese 

 quail, Excalfactoria Chineiisis, somewhat more handsome 

 in colouring than the others. An attempt was once made to 

 acclimatize the American "Bob White" quail here, a con- 

 siderably larger and more handsome bird, but the effort met 

 with no success. 



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