160 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



Ptarmigan, blackcock, and capercailzie are sent over 

 in the winter from the northern countries, frozen na- 

 turally, in cases containing from eighty to a hundred 

 each, shipped at Christiansund, landed at Hull, and 

 brought up to town by rail. Holland is good enough 

 to send us, sometimes forty or fifty baskets of two 

 hundred each in one steamer, of her delicious wild 

 ducks and those curious little birds the fighting snipes, 

 called ruffs and reeves {Machetes pugnax), which are 

 about the size of godwits, and the male of which has 

 most wonderful plumage, with a pretty crown of 

 grey feathers on his head, given to make him look 

 handsome and attractive at courting time. These birds 

 are good when fat. Though considerably larger than 

 the ruff, the godwits (Limosa cegocephala, Lin.) are 

 not in such high estimation as an article for the 

 table. 



Even wild turkeys and other birds from the back- 

 woods of America are occasionally seen in the shops of 

 our London poulterers, transmitted in a frozen state by 

 the A-tlantic steamers. St. Petersburg is supplied with 

 game in a like manner, from the distant wilds of Tartary 

 and Siberia. 



But our most curious importation is the quail from 

 Egypt and Algeria, which feeds us to this day as it fed 

 the Israelites in the desert, and is brought over, alive, in 

 consignments of from thirty to fifty thousand. These 

 birds are shipped at Alexandria and Algiers, and sent 

 on to Marseilles in charge of a native attendant to minis- 

 ter to their bodily wants. Thence they are "railed" 

 across France in cages holding 100 birds each, lodged 

 for the time at Smithfield, and then dispersed to all parts 

 of the kingdom. So carefully are they transported that 

 not more than seven per cent, of them perish by the 

 way. Of the quail there are several species spread over 

 Europe, Asia, and America, but that frequenting Europe, 

 and especially the coasts of the Mediterranean {Coturnix 

 communis^ Bon.), is the best known. 



They are easily taken in nets when they arrive in 



