QUAIL, BOBWHITE, PARTRIDGE 55 
birds plentiful. He was accompanied by his brother, 
and they had a brace of good dogs. They hunted for 
hours without the sign of a bird, and could not account 
for the apparent scarcity. At last their dogs made 
game, but before they could establish a point the birds 
commenced getting up all around and in front of them. 
They were confident that there were from 70 to 100 
birds, and instead of their taking the usual quail flight, 
they rose clear up in the air like a flock of pigeons, and 
went away for half a mile. They followed the line, 
which was in an open country, and found a few scat- 
tered birds in an old cotton field, fully the distance 
named from where the birds took their flight. They 
gave up finding more, and started again; and after a 
prolonged tramp they had a duplicate of their first ex- 
perience, finding a second flock or drove—not a bevy, 
for they say there were nearly a hundred. Like the 
former they made an immense flight. 
“Now, I know that it is common for the grouse in 
Scotland to pack, occasionally the English partridges 
do, and our prairie chickens; but I never saw or heard 
of quail doing so before.” 
On this report S. T. Hammond, referring to the 
year 1852, commented as follows: 
“In Iowa thirty-eight years ago, when crossing 
through a piece of woods from one prairie to another, 
we came upon a clearing of two or three acres of wheat 
stubble, and a large drove of quail got up, at least 200 
or 300, but they scattered in every direction. To this 
day we can see that clearing and how the quail filled 
