GUINEA FOWL AND QUAIL 349 



there were towards fifty eggs in the machine — fully the 

 most interesting eggs I ever saw in an incubator. The 

 sharply ovoid things were so small that the machine 

 looked like a big nest with a handful of eggs in the 

 center. When I saw them there were twenty-two wee 

 tumblers down in the nursery, and the eggs above were 

 sphinxlike, though a few were pipped. As I left next 

 day, my last act was to look up the young assistant and 

 ask about the quail. He reported several more as having 

 hatched during the night. 



Other states have tried experiments with quail — 

 notably Massachusetts — with more or less success. The 

 operators believe they will succeed in time, if not at 

 once. In the meantime, hope is, to the full, as interest- 

 ing as certainty. And all such efforts will be watched 

 eagerly. With quail as a species of poultry, and giving 

 fair returns for attention in breeding, hatching, and 

 brooding, the country would bid fair to be rich in quail. 

 For the quail are very prolific, a single hen often laying 

 fifty or sixty eggs in a season. In a single case one 

 has been known to lay one hundred and two eggs. 



It is thirty years or more since the first attempts were 

 made to establish European quail in this country. In a 

 few years several thousand had been liberated in the 

 middle West, the North, and East (some also in Canada). 

 They mated, nested, raised their young ; then all dis- 

 appeared with the autumn migrations ! The common 

 failure of the experiment with quail and the growing 

 scarcity, together with "non-export restrictions" being 

 passed by the Southern states for the bobwhite (" our 

 Southern partridge ") have combined to lead toward the 

 conviction that only the success of the efforts to make 



