THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
2,049 birds. This bag was made in twelve -and -a -half hours distributed 
over four days, though on the average three guns were shooting at a time. 
The following are the individual scores made by the different members 
of the party: — Mr W. Armstrong, 282 brace; Mr H. Parker, 224| 
brace; Mr Walter Pike, 137 brace; Mr T. B. Parker, 134| brace; 
Mr Keeton, 106 brace; Mr E. Parker, 50| brace; Mr G. Parker, 48| 
brace; Mr R. Irving, 41| brace. This report, which was published in the 
“ Cape Argus ” in December, 1905, shows not only the skill of the sports- 
men concerned, but the extraordinary abundance of quail at the time and 
place mentioned. There was a wonderful influx of quails into Mashonaland 
in 1901 and 1902, an account of which was published by Mr Tredgold 
in the “ Proceedings of the Rhodesia Scientific Association.” 
ARABIA AND PALESTINE. — During the course of his travels in the 
Holy Land Canon Tristram constantly met with quails. The plain 
outside Jaffa (he says) abounded with larks and quails, and in many 
parts of the country along the banks of the Jordan both quails and franco- 
lins were heard calling incessantly in the marsh and beanfields. He 
followed the left bank of the Jordan for miles, putting up herons, spur- 
wing plover and quails continually.* 
The Crown Prince Rudolf, also, on his way to Jericho, found plenty of 
shooting in the Jordan Valley, where the bag consisted of red-legged 
partridges (chukor), Hey’s partridge, snipe and quails. 
PERSIA. — ^The status of the quail in Persia is pretty much what it is 
in India. There are plenty of them at certain seasons and in haunts that 
are congenial to them, but as most English sportsmen who visit that 
country go there for much larger game — ^wild sheep and ibex — such small 
quarry as the quail is usually left to the native falconers and their sparrow- 
hawks, and to the bird catchers, who take them in nets with the aid of a 
quail pipe. One of these pipes is now before me as I write, given to me 
years ago by Mr Sydney Churchill when acting as Oriental Secretary at 
the British Legation at Teheran. It would cause too much of a digression 
however, to describe its ingenious construction and the ingenious method 
of using it, and the reader must be content to be told that if so disposed 
he may shoot plenty of quails in Persia, as well as partridges, sandgrouse 
and bustard. 
* Tristram, The Land of Israel; a journal of travels in Palestine (1876), pp. 398, 423, 447. 
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