BOB WHITE, THE GAME BIRD OE AMERICA. 
voice that the farmer stops his work to listen 
to him. 
In from three to four weeks the little downy 
young leave the egg, and even with pieces 
of egg-shell yet sticking on their backs they 
go off with their parents to be taught to 
search for food. They feed on the seeds 
of various grasses, weeds, and cereals, and 
on berries ; and they return a hundred-fold 
the bounty of their landlord, by destroying 
for his benefit not only countless numbers 
of destructive insects, but quantities of weed- 
seed, one to two gills of which the adult 
birds can stow 
away in their lit- 
tle crops during 
a day’s feeding. 
If rain should 
come on, or the 
cold wind blow, 
the mother calls 
her younglings 
under her wings, 
where they nestle 
safe from the chil- 
ling storm. When night comes on, she and 
her spouse take their little ones to some 
place removed from the thicket, where prowl 
the fox and the weasel. Soon after being 
hatched, tjae young, in running, assist them- 
selves with their tiny wings, and when two 
weeks old they take wing with a flutter that is 
487 
very amusing to those familiar with the start- 
ling whir of the old birds. When too large to 
gather under the mother they take their 
flight at night-fall, from the stubble or grain 
field where they have been feeding, 
and thus, breaking the scent, drop 
down in a compact cloud into some 
open space under a bush or tussock, 
and cozily huddling up to one an- 
other, form a little circle with their 
heads outward. Thus nestled, they 
see on all sides, and can spring at 
a moment from their bed to evade 
any foe that may steal on them in 
the night or at the early dawn. If 
the ground be covered with snow 
or hoar frost, or the weather be wet 
or blustering, they may remain hud- 
dled together all day, or may not 
venture to feed till late in the fore- 
noon. But if they are greeted with 
the sunrise and good weather, they 
cheep a good-morning to one an- 
other in soft, cheerful voices, and 
go at once to their feeding-grounds, 
where they regale themselves on 
the wheat of the stubbles, the buck- 
wheat, the seeds of grasses, and the 
rag-weed, and on the berries of the 
haw, the gum, and the chicken- 
grape. About ten or eleven o’clock 
they retire to the sunny side of a 
covert, and they do not venture 
forth again till three or four in the afternoon, 
when they again seek their food till sundown 
and bed-time. 
In October and November, the sportsman 
often “ springs ” coveys containing birds too 
small to be shot; sometimes half the covey 
will be in this condition, the other half full- 
grown birds. This fact may be accounted for 
thus : The eggs and the young are often de- 
stroyed by the wet and cold of the early sum- 
mer, or by beasts and birds of prey. If this 
calamity should overtake them, the hen again 
goes to laying, and this second brood is re- 
tarded by the time lost between the first and 
second nestings. Wlien birds of two sizes are 
found in the same covey, it seems to show 
that the parents have raised two broods; and 
this, I think, happens oftener to the south 
than to the north of the James River, — the 
summer of our middle and and northern States 
being generally too short for the raising of 
two broods. Baird says : “ They have two 
broods in a season, the second in August ” ; 
while Audubon states that “ in Texas, the 
Floridas, and as far eastward as the neigh- 
borhood of Charleston, in South Carolina, it 
breeds twice in the year, first in May, and 
again in September.” 
BOB WHITE AND EUROPEAN QUAIL. (COTURNIX COMMUNIS.) 
BOB WHITE EGG (FULL SIZE). 
