QUAIL SHOOTING 
/ LTHOUGH quail are not included in the list of game as 
defined by section 2 of the principal Game Act (1 & 2 
k Will. 4, cap. 32), a game licence is nevertheless necessary 
^ for shooting them. This is required by the Game Licences 
Act, 1860 (23 & 24 Viet., cap. 90, sec. 4), which provides 
*L.that every person who shall kill, take, or pursue, or use 
any dog, gun, net, or other engine for killing, taking, or pursuing any 
game, or any woodcock, snipe, quail, or landrail, shall take out a proper 
“ licence to kill game ” under this Act. There is a general impression 
that any of these birds may be shot by the holder of a ten shilling licence, 
but for the reason above given this is not the case. 
The question then arises where and when are quail now to be met with 
in the British Islands, a question not so easily answered. This little bird 
is a summer -visitor, arriving in April and departing in October, and 
between those two months it used to be commonly distributed throughout 
the country, nesting after the manner of a little partridge. As its habit is 
to lay a large number of eggs— from eight to ten, or twelve — ^it is reasonable 
to suppose that during the summer months a considerable number ought 
to be reared annually, and this, in fact, was formerly the case, especially 
in the eastern counties, where the light, dry soil and the wide extent of 
unreclaimed land admirably suited its requirements. In the Cambridge- 
shire fens and rough lands, also, quails used to breed commonly, and the 
London market was supplied mainly from that district, as well as from 
Norfolk and Essex. I remember that “ in the seventies ” quails were 
plentiful around Newmarket and Cherry Hinton. They were formerly 
far more numerous in Norfolk than at present, showing a preference for 
sandy soils, and according to Messrs Gurney and Fisher, it was “ not 
unusual for a sportsman to kill, on light lands early in the month of 
September, three or four brace of these birds in a day.” When 
Stevenson published the first volume of his “ Birds of Norfolk ” in 
1866, he remarked that “the great stronghold of this species in Nor- 
folk during the summer months was in the rough fens of the south- 
western district, in the neighbourhood of Feltwell, where Mr Clough 
Newcome found them so plentiful that from ten to twelve couple might be 
shot in a day.” 
Dr Churchill Babington, who published his “ Catalogue of the Birds of 
Suffolk ” in 1886, enumerates under the head of Quail a great many locali- 
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