:4 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



species is tlie bird that supplied the famishing Israelites with food in the wilderness. 

 It has, however, been asserted by various authors that it was a flying fish, a 

 locust, and a Sand-Grouse. But everything tends to prove that it must have been 

 the Quail ; for it was most undoubtedly a bird, and the present species is almost 

 the only one that migrates in such great numbers as to answer to the description 

 in Holy Writ. In such quantities does it migrate that, according to Yarrell, as 

 many as 160,000 are recorded to have been netted, in one season, on Goat Island, 

 a small Island at the entrance of the Bay of Naples ; and Temminck states that 

 near Nettuno, in the kingdom of Naples, a 100,000 have been taken in a day." 

 Vast numbers of Quails are imported into England from the south of Burope by 

 the wholesale poulterers. They are brought over in very low flat cages, open only 

 in the front, before which are placed troughs filled with hempseed on which the 

 birds are fatted. 



The Quail is subject to many local variations in plumage, these some ornith- 

 ologists have considered as distinct species. There is a black or semi-black variety 

 in Spain, another form in South Africa, and several in Asia. All these breed 

 together, and they may be regarded as local variations. The general colour of 

 the typical species is sandy-brown, with buff shafts to the feathers. The throat 

 is white, the male having two dark brown bands running from one ear to the 

 other, and ending in a black patch on the throat, which, however, is not present 

 until the second year. The under parts of the body are white, the chest being 

 buff. The female has no black in the middle of the throat, nor does she possess 

 the two throat bands of the male, but her chest is more thickly spotted with dark 

 brown. The nest is a mere hollow scraped in the ground, and the eggs, which 

 vary in number from seven or eight to twelve, are yellowish- white, spotted with 

 umber-brown. 



