252 THE IMPORTANCE OF BIRD LIFE 



oaks of Long Island, and while he may see or 

 hear a dozen in a morning it is doubtful if lie will 

 obtain a full bag that day ; and he will report that 

 there are plenty of birds. 



Now that the wild turkey and the prairie 

 chicken have passed their zenith of popularity, 

 the game-bird which supplied the most sport is 

 the quail, represented in the East by the bob- 

 white and in the West by the California quail 

 and a few allied species. These birds are so in- 

 significant in size that they escaped the weapons 

 of sportsmen until the nineteenth century was 

 well begun. Quail were immune while larger 

 game remained near the settlements. 



The day came, however, — ^first on the Atlantic 

 seaboard, then further inland, — when turkeys had 

 grown scarce, heath hens were extinct, and ruffed 

 grouse had withdrawn deep into the wood. Then 

 followed the attack on the bob-white, a bird of the 

 open thickets. By 1900 virtually all the north- 

 eastern States had been cleared of this native spe- 

 cies. A remnant of its former numbers remained 

 here and there in isolated districts, but the race 

 as a whole was on the verge of extinction. 



In the South, however, the bob-white held on. 

 The cover there was denser, sportsmen were 

 fewer, and there were still turkeys and other large 

 game to be had. But, as the quail population 

 waned in the North, sportsmen turned their atten- 

 tion southward. Virginia, the Carolinas,. Georgia, 



