UPLAND SHOOTING. 
225 
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 comrades, even to night-fall; and in such cases— 
I know not if it be a fancy on my part—there has often seemed 
to me to be an unusual degree of melancholy 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 autumn, and in a very few minutes 
killed twelve of them, for they lay hard in the tedded clover, 
and it was perfectly 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 sumachs in the 
corner of a rail fence. I could have shot him certainly enough, 
but some undefined feeling induced me to call my dogs to heel, 
and spare his little life ; yet afterward I almost regretted what 
I certainly intended at the time to be 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 nature in the heart of 
man, that however much, when not influenced by the direct 
heat of sport, we deprecate the killing of these little birds, and 
pity the individual sufferers,—the moment the dog points, and 
the bevy springs, or the propitious morning promises good 
sport, all the compunction is forgotten in the eagerness and 
emulation which are natural to our race. 
It is also worthy of remark, that in spite of his apparent 
tameness at peculiar seasons, and his willingness to be half na¬ 
turalized, the Quail has hitherto defied all attempts at perfect 
domestication, and has, I believe, never been known to breed 
in confinement,—this peculiarity going, perhaps, some way to 
render him fair game. 
Of all birds, in this or any other country, so far as I know 
