BOB WHITE, THE GAME BIRD OE AMERICA. 
489 
CALIFORNIA VALLEY PARTRIDGE OR QUAIL. (LOPHORTYX CALIFORNICUS. ) 
among them with his well- trained setter and unerring 
gun, so that death has sorely thinned their numbers, 
they will protract their little call for their lost com- 
rades even to night-fall ; and in such cases — I know 
not if it be fancy on my part — there has often seemed 
to me to be an unusual degree of melanclioly in their 
wailing whistle. 
“ Once this struck me especially. I had found a 
small bevy of thirteen birds in an orchard, close to 
the house in which I was passing a portion of the au- 
tumn, and in a very few minutes killed twelve of them, 
for they lay hard in the tedded clover, and it was per- 
fectly open shooting. The thirteenth and last bird, 
rising with two others which I killed right and left, 
flew but a short distance and dropped among some 
sumacs in the corner of a rail fence. I could have 
shot him certainly enough, but some undefined feeling 
induced me to call my dog to heel, and spare his little 
life ; yet afterward I almost regretted what I certainly 
intended at the time for mercy. For day after day, so 
long as I remained in the country, I heard his sad 
call from morn till dewy eve, crying for his departed 
friends, and full, apparently, of memory, which is, alas ! 
but too often another name for sorrow. 
“ It is a singular proof how strong is the passion 
for the chase and the love of pursuit implanted by nat- 
ure in the heart of man, that however much, when 
not influenced by the direct heat of sport, we depre- 
VoL. XXVI. — 46. 
cate the killing of these little birds, and pity the indi- 
vidual sufferers, the moment the dog points and the 
bevy springs, or the propitious morning jiromises 
good sport, all the compunction is forgotten in the 
eagerness and emulation which are natural to our 
race.” 
Bob White schools the wing-shot as severely 
as the wily trout tries the angler. Like the 
trout, he has habits which we must be ac- 
quainted with in order to find him. If the 
weather be fair, start early, for the birds will be 
on their feeding-grounds at sunrise, and will be 
found in the fields of stubble, or in the midst 
of the rag-weed, and along the brier-fringed 
ditches ; and do not forget the field of buck- 
wheat, for they are especially fond of it. 
About ten or eleven they will cease feeding, 
and will seek the sunny side of some covert 
near a stream, where they will quench their 
thirst after their morning meal. Here they 
will dust and preen themselves, and take their 
noonday siesta. The birds will generally re- 
main here till three or four hours after mid- 
