THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
ties where this bird was formerly to be found, adding the remark that 
“ it has now for a long time been everywhere scarce.” 
In the hot dry summer of 1870 quail were reported to be plentiful in 
north Lincolnshire. In one instance three brace were killed in a day by 
one gun, and eight brace by another sportsman on a farm near Caistor, 
where two or three large bevies occurred, doubtless bred there.* The 
former abundance of the quail in Essex is vouched for by Jesse, who, in 
his ‘‘ Scenes and Tales of Country Life ” (p. 267), observes: ‘‘ In one 
district in Essex numerous eggs have been found during the mowing 
season, and as many as sixty couple have been killed in the course of a 
few days’ shooting on one manor in that county.” In Kent the quail is 
reported to be less common now than twenty years ago. Mr Ticehurst 
was informed by a resident in that county that until twenty years ago 
he used to meet with quail every year in autumn. He frequently shot 
five or six in a day, and found them particularly abundant on the high 
ground overlooking Romney Marsh .f 
In some years quail are much commoner than in others, as in 1870, 
when they were observed to be plentiful in Surrey, as they were in other 
counties. Mr Bucknill, in his ‘‘ Birds of Surrey ” (1900), mentions several 
instances of nests having been found. In the late “ sixties ” and during 
the ‘‘ seventies ” I used to shoot a good deal in West Sussex, where my 
father resided; and in the month of September both quail and landrail 
were often added to the bag of partridges. We generally found them in 
dry clover, and on the edges of stubbles, as well as in rough meadows 
that had been grazed by cattle, where common weeds like dock, plantain, 
sorrel, and chickweed were running to seed, and provided the birds 
with plenty of food. Such fields would attract them still were they to reach 
that part of the country in such numbers as they used to do. On the Warren 
farm near Brighton in September, 1896, Mr H. R. Spooner shot five quail, 
and Mr Beard, the Master of the Brookside Harriers, previously killed 
three couple there. In Hampshire, in the neighbourhood of Selborne, 
Gilbert White remarked that ” there are few quail, because they more 
affect open fields than enclosures.” But he was familiar with the bird’s 
call — whit‘tu-whit— -and has referred to it in his “Naturalist’s Summer 
Evening Walk.” He was aware also of its migratory habits, and in his 
thirteenth letter to Pennant, remarked that “Quails crowd to our southern 
* Cordeaux, Birds of the Humber District (1872), p. 83. 
t Ticehurst, Birds of Kent (1909), p. 392. 
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