QUAILS. 215 
ering of leaves. The sportsman should be early afield, for 
as soon as the sun appears the birds leave their roosting 
places and commence running about. Their scent is then 
easily found by a dog, especially if they are plentiful, and 
they generally are at that season, as they congregate in 
large bevies. When they are flushed they fly for the first 
cover, then scatter, and lie so close, in many instances, 
that a person may kill the majority of them, as they rise 
singly or in pairs. The best dogs frequently fail to detect 
birds which are actually under their noses. The cause of 
this is attributed by some persons to the power quails have 
of withholding their scent, while others assume that it is 
the result of ‘‘too much scent being scattered about,” 
as the birds run in various directions when they alight, 
and thus make it impossible to locate them. Some think 
that the creatures are so terror-stricken on reaching cover 
that they press the feathers close to the body, and thus 
prevent their scent from escaping. Hither of the latter 
two theories seems more plausible than the first, as it 
does not seem possible for a bird to have the power of 
voluntarily withholding the odor of its body. The only 
way to rout the quails, when they baffle the dogs, is to 
thoroughly beat the ground or bushes, as they often wait 
until they are almost kicked out before they take to the 
wing. 
The Virginia quail is the only species of its genus that 
really affords good sport, as it is the only one which will 
he any way well to a dog. It is also scattered over the 
greater part of the country, from Massachusetts to the 
Rocky Mountains, but it is far more numerous in the 
Western than in the Eastern States. Its abundance in 
the West may be inferred from the fact that it 1s nothing 
unusual for a man to bag from twenty to thirty brace in 
a day, with a muzzle-loader. A pot-hunter has boasted 
of killing two thousand in a little over five months, and 
a person who considered himself dexterous with the gun 
