QUAIL. GALLINA. PERDIX. 319 
The female makes scarcely any nest, depositing her eggs Nest, &c. 
upon the ground in a very shallow receptacle, scratched for 
the occasion, and generally in fields of green wheat. —They 
vary in number from six vo twelve or fourteen in this country, 
but are said frequently to amount, on the Continent, to eigh- 
teen or twenty.—-Their coleur also fluctuates from a leek to 
a bluish and an cil green, sometimes marked with large black- 
ish-brown blotches; at other times with very small specks of 
that colour. 
Quails are very abundant on the Continent during the 
summer, but migrate in autumn to the warmer latitudes of 
Asia and Africa. Portugal is the only exception ; in which 
country they are met with throughout the year, but more nu- 
merously in winter than in summer; and from which fact it 
would appear, that this particular situation answers as a win- 
ter retreat to some of the birds that are bred in the more 
northern provinces of Europe. During their pericdical 
flights between Europe and Africa, they visit the islands of 
the Archipelago, and the shores of Italy and Sicily (upon 
which they alight for rest) in myriads. ‘The quantity some- 
times killed under these circumstances is astonishing, as may 
be judged from the record of one hundred thousand having 
been destroyed in one day on the coasts of the kingdom of 
Naples *. In Sicily their autumnal arrival is anxiously ex- 
pected, and the inhabitants are represented as taking particu- 
lar delight in the sport of shooting them; the shores being 
at this particular time lined with people carrying fowling- 
pieces, and the strait covered with boats similarly filled, all 
eagerly watching for the arrival of their spoil. In France 
great numbers are taken alive by means of a call made to 
imitate their whistle, and which entices them under a net; 
but by this device males only are taken, thus accounting for 
the few female specimens to be found amongst the many 
hundreds kept in confinement by the London poulterers, and 
which are received from France. 
* See Mont. Ornith. Dict. and Suppl. art. Quait. 
