The Coming 
of the Quail. 
(250) THE;"BIRD WORLD. 
The Coming of the Quail. 
By G. CADOGAN ROTHERY.* 
Vegetation flourishes richly in the 
South. Com is sprouting well, the 
broad bright green flags of maize wave 
lazily in the hot air, vines are a mass 
of foliage, and already there are signs 
of fruit, both grapes and figs. On the 
hill-sides, where aromatic thyme, rose¬ 
mary, heather, and juniper thrive in the 
rich red pockets of soil between the dis¬ 
order of piled-up weather-worn boulders, 
the grass, thin and wiry, which had shot 
up to shelter a host of insect life, is 
fast becoming yellow and slippery under 
the combined effect of sun-rays and the 
fierce winds sweeping over the sea from 
Africa’s torrid shores. 
Even now we can see the gradual 
parching up of things, except in the 
cultivated and protected spots, for on 
this exposed coast water soon becomes 
scarce, as we are entirely dependent on 
rain. But down in the little copse at 
the bottom of the garden, which shelters 
a small artificial pond, the Rossignols 
are singing exquisitely, and in the pine- 
wood beyond small Ring-doves are busy 
round about the tall columbaria. 
Then suddenly we become aware of 
small brown balls shooting unsteadily 
through the air and plumping down 
among bushes, rocks, or any kind of 
cover. It is easy to mark them and 
walk them down, for this is the coming 
of the Quail. The poor, timid things 
are exhausted after their long flight 
across arid parts of Africa and the 
stretch of the Mediterranean. They 
drop down on the first land, thin, 
parched, and utterly spent, and so they 
are gathered up by the country folk, 
like a harvest, to be garnered in wicker 
ca,ges, there to be fattened up. These 
first comers, doubtless from the far 
Soudan and the hinterland of Algeria, 
* In The Badminton Magazine. 
have no fight in them, scarcely stirring 
from the capturing* hand. Later on, 
however, stronger birds arrive, and join¬ 
ing the few revived birds which have 
escaped early capture and destruction, 
afford excellent sport to local gunners, 
who, with nondescript retrievers, walk 
up the small coveys and single birds. 
It is a hard trudge over rough hilly 
ground, but the work is fast and merry 
while it lasts. As you walk along you 
tread on beds of sweet-smelling plants, 
which send up little waves of air laden 
with aromatics. Locally, however, old- 
world methods are preferred. Chil¬ 
dren are sent out to collect the first ex¬ 
hausted visitants, and later the cunning 
of the trapper is employed. For all 
along the Mediterranean coast the 
coming of the Quail was eagerly looked 
for, and welcomed as a harbinger of 
the fruitful season. He, indeed, was 
dedicated to the goddess of fertility, 
Astarte; he was the mysterious messen¬ 
ger who came from the sky, bringing 
tidings of renewed life, and who later 
returned to the empyrean as the messen¬ 
ger of death, the foreshadowing of 
winter. 
Legend says that Asteria, mother of 
Melcarth, the god of the Tyreans, was 
transformed into a Quail. For ages the 
Quail was offered up as a burnt sacri¬ 
fice ; often they were tethered to the 
funeral pyres, so that the flames as they 
reached the dead or perchance the living 
Priest-King sacrifice, released the birds, 
who flew off as messengers to the Abode 
of Shades, the carriers of the spirit. It 
was a sacred bird, but, like the equally 
sacred wheat, was regarded as the most 
precious of foods. And so they offered 
cool water in shady groves, and there 
captured them for ritual and gastro- 
nomical purposes. 
