THE CALIFORNIA PARTRIDGES 129 



for the birds, and having driven a large number of 

 flocks to this place they went in with the dogs, work- 

 ing along the paths, and often made large bags, on one 

 occasion no fewer than ten dozen birds. I have heard 

 of much larger bags, numbering hundreds of birds, 

 being made in the earlier days when the game was 

 extremely abundant, but no doubt much of the shoot- 

 ing was at birds on the ground, when a dozen or more 

 might be killed at a single shot. 



Mr. T. S. Van Dyke, writing recently for the West- 

 ern Field, the Pacific Coast magazine, says he has writ- 

 ten so often of this bird that he feels positively ashamed 

 every time he looks at one. He said that when he 

 first came to California, in 1875, quail in flocks now 

 quite incredible soared out of almost every cactus 

 patch, shook almost every hillside with the thunder of 

 a thousand wings, trotted in strings along the roads, 

 wheeled in platoons .over the grassy slopes and burst 

 from around almost every spring in a thousand curling 

 lines. The same writer says that the partridges have 

 already deserted many of the vallej-^s and are now 

 more often found in the hills, ready always to run 

 and fly from one hillside to another, and "their leg 

 power, always respectable enough to relieve you from 

 any question of propriety about shooting at one run- 

 ning, they have cultivated to such a fine point that 

 sometimes they never rise at all, and you may chase 

 and chase and chase them and get never a rise." 

 Writing at another time Mr. Van Dyke advises the 

 shooter not to attempt to bag anything at first, but to 

 spend all the time in breaking and scattering the 

 coveys, racing and chasing after them and firing broad- 



