154 THE BLACK-BREASTED OR RAIN QUAIL. 



Quail to be here. Bird-catchers then bring them into the 

 market literally in myriads, and sell them at from Rs. 1-8 to 2-0 

 per hundred. Like the males of the Common Quail, those of 

 this species are greatly prized for fighting, being just as pug- 

 nacious. They are generally taken in nets, in the same way as 

 the Common Quail." 



Indeed, all over the country they are caught in just the same 

 manner as the Grey Quail, and, conspicuously different as the 

 great black patch on the breast renders the male, the two species 

 are commonly confounded even by some of those who make 

 their capture a profession. 



Rain Quail afford just as pretty shooting as the Common 

 Quail when they are numerous ; indeed, as they run less and fly 

 rather faster, they yield perhaps better sport ; but I have never 

 known it possible to make such huge bags of these as one can 

 of the other. In Upper India, during the winter and spring, you 

 are' pretty sure to pick up a brace or two along with the Grey 

 Quail (with which they seem to associate on friendly terms) when 

 shooting this latter ; but I never knew more than five brace killed 

 at this season in a day by one gun. But just when they first 

 appear in the Doab in June or July, according as the rains are 

 early or late, you may manage by hard work to get from twenty 

 to thirty brace in a day if you have steady dogs and there is 

 plenty of grass about from two to three feet in height, or if, as 

 is the case in some districts, there are a good many fields of the 

 dwarf early rain millets. 



Colonel Sykes asserts (Tr. Z. S., II., 15) that the flesh of this 

 species is drown, that of the Common Quail being of course 

 white. Many as I have eaten, I am ashamed to say that I 

 have never noticed whether this is or is not a fact, though I dis- 

 tinctly remember that they were never so fat and never such 

 good eating as the Common Quail. 



There IS no doubt, I think, that the Rain Quail is monoga- 

 mous. From April they are always found in pairs, and both 

 birds may always be flushed near a nest ; and whilst the hen is 

 sitting, the male is perpetually calling to her. 



More birds, I believe, breed in the Deccan, Guzerat and Central 

 India, and parts of the Central Provinces than elsewhere in India ; 

 but though comparatively thinly scattered about the country 

 after their first arrival, they do breed in suitable localities through- 

 out those provinces to which I have already indicated that they 

 are monsoon visitants. But as breeding haunts they always 

 select tracts abounding in grass, by preference grass of the finer 

 kinds that only grows to the height of two or three feet, and 

 more especially grass dotted about with thorny shrubs. In the 

 highly cultivated alluvial plains of the Doab and parts of Behar, 

 Oudh, and the North-Western Provinces, few remain to breed ; the 



