THE AMERICAN QUAIL. 259 
stubbles after harvest, so that while he in nothing dete- 
viorates the harvest to be ingathered, he tends in the 
highest degree to the preservation of clean and unweeded 
fields and farms ; indeed, when‘it is taken into consider- 
ation that each individual Quail consumes daily nearly 
two gills of weed-seed, it will be at once evident that a 
few bevies of these little birds, carefully and assiduously 
preserved on a farm, will do more towards keeping it 
free of weeds, than the daily annual Jabor of a dozen 
farm servants. This preservation will not be counter- 
acted or injured by a moderate and judicious use of the 
gun in the autumnal months; for the bevies need thin- 
ning, especially of the cock-birds, which invariably out- 
number the hens, and which, if unable to pair, from a 
want of mates, form into little squads or companies of 
males, which remain barren, and become the deadly 
enemies of the young cocks of the following year, beat- 
ing them off and dispersing them; though, strange to 
say, they will themselves never mate again, nor do aught 
after remaining unpaired during one season, to propagate 
their species. The use of the trap, on the contrary, 
destroying whole bevies at a swoop, where the gun, even 
in the most skillful hands, rarely much more than deci- 
mates them, may, in a single winter’s day, if many traps 
be set, destroy the whole stocking of a large farm for 
years, if not forever. I have myself invariably remark- 
ed, since my attention was first called to the fact, that 
those farms which are best stocked with Quail, are inva- 
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