University of Virginia Library

SOME OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING QUAIL.

BY J. CYPRESS, JR.

October has arrived, and has entered into the kingdom
prepared for him by his summery brethren, departed. A kingdom,
truly, within a republic, but mild, magnificent, pro bono
publico, and full of good fruits; so that not a democrat, after
the strictest sect of St. Tammany, but bows the knee. Hail!
O King! His accomplished artists are preparing royal palaces
among the woods and fields, and on the hill-sides, painting the
mountains and arching the streams with glories copied from
the latest fashion of rainbows. His keen morning winds and
cool evening moons, assiduous servants, are dropping diamonds
upon the fading grass and tree-tops, and are driving in the
feathery tenants of his marshes, bays, and brakes. Thrice
happy land and water lord! See how they streak the early
sky, piercing the heavy clouds with the accurate wedge of
their marshalled cohorts, shouting pœans as they go—and how
they plunge into well-remembered waters, with an exalting
sound, drinking in rest and hearty breakfasts! These be seges
of herons, herds of cranes, droppings of sheldrakes, springs of
teals, trips of wigeons, coverts of cootes, gaggles of geese,
sutes of mallards, and badelynges of ducks; all of which the
profane and uninitiated, miserable herd, call flocks of fowl, not
knowing discrimination! Meadow and upland are made harmonious
and beautiful with congregations of plovers, flights
of doves, walks of snipes, exaltations of larks, coveys of partridges,
and bevies of quail.[1] For all these vouchsafed com

forts may we be duly grateful! But chiefly, thou sun-burned,
frost-browned monarch, do we thank thee that thou especially
bringest to igorous maturity and swift strength, our own bird
of our heart, our family chicken, tetrao coturnix.

The quail is peculiarly a domestic bird, and is attached to
his birthplace, and the home of his forefathers. The various
members of the anatic families educate their children in the
cool summer of the far north, and bathe their warm bosoms in
July, in the iced-water of Hudson's Bay; but when Boreas
scatters the rushes where they builded their bedchambers,
they desert their fatherland, and fly to disport in the sunny
waters of the south. They are cosmopolites entirely, seeking
their fortunes with the sun. So, too, heavy-eyed, wise Master
Scolopax fixeth his place of abode, not among the hearths
and altars where his infancy was nurtured, but he goeth a
skaaping where best he may run his long bill into the mud,
tracking the warm brookside of juxta-capricornical latitudes.
The songsters of the woodland, when their customary crops
of insects and berries are cut off in the fall, gather themselves
together to renew their loves, and get married in more genial
climates. Even black-gowned Mr. Corvus,—otherwise called
Jim Crow,—in autumnal fasts contemplateth Australian carcases.
Presently, the groves so vocal, and the sky so full,
shall be silent and barren. The “melancholy days” will soon
be here. Only thou, dear Bob White—not of the Manhattan—
wilt remain. Thy cousin, tetrao umbellus,[2] will be not far off,
it is true; but he is mountainous and precipitous, and lives in
solitary places, courting rocky glens and craggy gorges, misandronist.
Where the secure deer crops the young mosses
of the mountain stream, and the bear steals wild honey, there

drums the ruffed strutter on his ancient hemlock log. Ice
cools not his blood, nor the deep snow-drift, whence he,
startled, whirrs impetuous to the solemn pines, and his hiding
places of laurel and tangled rhododendron, laughing at cheated
dogs and wearied sportsmen. A bird to set traps for. Unfamiliar,
rough, rugged hermit. Dry meat. I like him not.

The quail is the bird for me. He is no rover, no emigrant.
He stays at home, and is identified with the soil. Where the
farmer works, he lives, and loves and whistles.[3] In budding
spring time, and in scorching summer—in bounteous autumn,
and in barren winter, his voice is heard from the same bushy
hedge fence, and from his customary cedars. Cupidity and
cruelty may drive him to the woods, and to seek more quiet
seats; but be merciful and kind to him, and he will visit your
barn-yard, and sing for you upon the boughs of the apple-tree
by your gate-way. But when warm May first woos the young
flowers to open and receive her breath, then begin the loves,
and jealousies, and duels of the heroes of the bevy. Duels,
too often, alas! bloody and fatal! for there liveth not an individual
of the gallinaceous order, braver, bolder, more enduring
than a cock quail, fighting for his ladye-love. Arms, too, he
wieldeth, such as give no vain blows, rightly used. His
mandible serves for other purposes than mere biting of grass-hoppers

and picking up Indian corn. While the dire affray
rages, Miss Quailina looketh on, from her safe perch on a
limb, above the combatants, impartial spectatress, holding her
love under her left wing, patiently; and when the vanquished
craven finally bites the dust, descends and rewards the conquering
hero with her heart and hand.

Now begin the cares and responsibilities of wedded life.
Away fly the happy pair to seek some grassy tussock, where,
safe from the eye of the hawk, and the nose of the fox, they
may rear their expected brood in peace, provident, and not
doubting that their espousals will be blessed with a numerous
offspring. Oats harvest arrives, and the fields are waving
with yellow grain. Now, be wary, oh kind-hearted cradler,
and tread not into those pure white eggs ready to burst with
life! Soon there is a peeping sound heard, and lo! a proud
mother walketh magnificently in the midst of her children,
scratching and picking, and teaching them how to swallow.
Happy she, if she may be permitted to bring them up to maturity,
and uncompelled to renew her joys in another nest.

The assiduities of a mother have a beauty and a sacredness
about them that command respect and reverence in all animal
nature, human or inhuman—what a lie does that word carry
—except, perhaps, in monsters, insects, and fish. I never
yet heard of the parental tenderness of a trout, eating up his
little baby, nor of the filial gratitude of a spider, nipping the
life out of his gray-headed father, and usurping his web. But
if you would see the purest, the sincerest, the most affecting
piety of a parent's love, startle a young family of quails, and
watch the conduct of the mother. She will not leave you.
No, not she. But she will fall at your feet, uttering a noise
which none but a distressed mother can make, and she will
run, and flutter, and seem to try to be caught, and cheat your

outstretched hand, and affect to be wing-broken, and wounded,
and yet have just strength to tumble along, until she has drawn
you, fatigued, a safe distance from her threatened children,
and the young hopes of her heart; and then will she mount,
whirring with glad strength, and away through the maze of
trees you have not seen before, like a close-shot bullet, fly to
her skulking infants. Listen now. Do you hear those three
half-plaintive notes, quickly and clearly poured out? She is
calling the boys and girls together. She sings not now “Bob
White!” nor “ah! Bob White!” That is her husband's lovecall,
or his trumpet-blast of defiance. But she calls sweetly
and softly for her lost children. Hear them “peep! peep!
peep!” at the welcome voice of their mother's love! They
are coming together. Soon the whole family will meet again.
It is a foul sin to disturb them; but retread your devious way,
and let her hear your coming footsteps, breaking down the
briars, as you renew the danger. She is quiet. Not a word
is passed between the fearful fugitives. Now, if you have the
heart to do it, lie low, keep still, and imitate the call of the
hen-quail. O, mother! mother! how your heart would die
if you could witness the deception! The little ones raise up
their trembling heads, and catch comfort and imagined safety
from the sound. “Peep! peep!” they come to you, straining
their little eyes, and clustering together, and answering, seem
to say, “Where is she! Mother! mother! we are here!”

I knew an Ethiopian once—he lives yet in a hovel, on the
brush plains of Matowacs—who called a whole bevy together
in that way. He first shot the parent bird; and when the
murderous villain had ranged them in close company, while
they were looking over each other's necks, and mingling their
doubts, and hopes, and distresses, in a little circle, he levelled
his cursed musket at their unhappy breasts, and butchered—

“What! all my pretty ones! Did you say all?” He did;
and he lives yet! O, let me not meet that nigger six miles
north of Patchogue, in a place where the scrub oaks cover
with cavernous gloom a sudden precipice, at whose bottom
lies a deep lake, unknown but to the Kwaaek, and the lost
deer-hunter. For my soul's sake, let me not encounter him
in the grim ravines of the Callicoon, in Sullivan, where the
everlasting darkness of the hemlock forests would sanctify
virtuous murder!

My farther reflections on this subject, I will keep, for the
present, to myself.

The poor quail has to contend with many enemies. Not
only with Sir Reynard, who has a constitutional right to levy
tribute upon his race, and his several doubtfully-connected,
half-starved, brother quadrupedal thieves of the greenwood;
not only with the winged pirates of the sky, skimming and
sweeping up and down the waving billows of the yellow field,
with the quietness and speed of a sudden sun-ray; not only
with the horse-hair nooses of school-boy truants, and the figure-y
4 box-traps of vagabond hen-roost pilferers; not only
with the coarse cupidity of the market-man, who kills all to-day,
and cares not for to-morrow; not only with the mean,
falsely called, sportsman, who shoots in season and out of
season, and kills for numbers, and not for exercise, skill's
sake, and honor; but alas! alas! too often with the bleak and
heartless elements themselves! Who does not remember the
horrid snows of thirty-six, which filled all the valleys, and
raised rival mountains alongside of mountains! Then died the
race. The angry clouds at nightfall began to pour out their
wind and sleet, but the quail heart had not yet known to fear
the skies. Each fated bevy, calling in its straggling supper-hunters,
tracked its secure path to the bottom of its favorite

cedar-bush; and there, upon the yet warm bed of oak leaves,
and thick matted spear grass, composed their chilled limbs in
the usual circle, and went to sleep. To sleep? ay, to sleep
forever! No morning came to them. No opportunity had they
to regret unsaid prayers. A late morning came to the world
above, and a cold sun shone on their shroud—their beautiful
shroud of snow! Almost “seven fathoms deep!” buried in
their winding-sheet! No resurrection for ye, poor birds!
Did they think it never would be light? Yes, they fell asleep
there in their beds, and died of too much covering! The
spring came, and the early ploughman dug up a furrow near
their wasted corses. There they lay, side by side, as they
committed themselves to sleep, undivided in death, as they
were beautiful and without reproach in life!

Beethoven must have written his exquisite song of the
“Quail,” after a hard winter. I never heard Catalani sing it,
but I will be sworn it is a solemn anthem.

The quail receives in many countries the most studious and
devout protection. In China they domesticate him, and train
him for the cock-pit. In some states on the continent of Europe
they almost worship him. The German has a beautiful
superstition, that his note expresses the words, “Furchten
Gott.”[4] England is too damp and smoky for him. He cannot
acclimate. The lord, who, by the assistance of his game-keeper,
has an oath made that he killed a quail, is gazetted
through the three kingdoms.

The quail is our bird—our own American bird. Shall
we not protect him and his household? If all the powers of
destruction are let loose to play upon him, how shall he be
saved? Even now, his fate seems to be inevitable, like the
Indians. But a few years since, he was a proud nation—a

green bay tree, If we look not sharply, we soon may say,
“seges est, ubi Troja fuit.” That he is not now utterly annihilated,
and flying in the Elysian fields, with his relative,
tetrao cupido,[5] is owing to the good hearts of a very small
few of his former fellow-citizens, who snatched him from the
snow-bank, and housed, and fed him during the winter, and
gave him to liberty in the spring, and to some other few, who
sent to his people at the south, and renewed his presence in
the faces of his brethren. Even some of these, representatives
of a ruined nation, have been sacrificed in brutal moments,
to adorn the recking cellars of reckless paunch-providers,
and to furnish August—very August—suppers for raw
counter-jumpers, who have heard of his glory.

A few words, by way of application of the subject. The
legislature of the state of New-York, considering all the dangers
and necessities of one of the most worthy families of the
state, have, in no wretched spirit of monopoly, but in the true
spirit of “equal protection to all,” enacted a statue for his
preservation, and have taken the dear bird under their sheltering
wing. No man, nor boy, nor fool, may kill a quail except
between the twenty-fifth of October and the fifth of January,
nor compass, nor procure his death, nor have his murdered
corpse in his possession, out of the specified period, in
either of the humane counties of York, Kings, Queens, or
Westchester! O, Suffolk! how art thou disgraced, not being
named! Fiat lex! Tom Tucker and Jem Valentine, chief

advocates, immortalized themselves! The partridge, too, and
Master Scolopax, in his season, have their passports. Beware
of the heavy penalty.

Finally, this matter recommendeth itself to the serious
attention of all transgressors. The sin hath already stung
divers poachers, and accessories, before and after the fact.
It hath been distinctly proved before a justice of the peace,
that eight times five make forty dollars. Just judgment!
Dear feed! Worse than sour grapes! The Marine Court
hath visited other transgressions with swift judgment. Even
men who have received presents of game from places where
it was lawfully killed, and where it might have been virtuously
manducated, have been sorely mulcted. They have
learned, too late, the awful fate of Hercules. They have
discovered, after they have been impregnated with the poison,
that they must know the giver before they accept a shirt.
They study Ovid, now, and have learned by heart—

and the whole of that chief case in point. Penitent sinners,
I weep for them! Doubt it, and touch the forbidden fruit if
ye dare, and say, “tell that to the marines!”

Lastly—true sportsmen ought to examine themselves, and
take care that they have no disposition for blood in the skirts
of their shooting-jackets, except in the allowed days of October,
November, and December. If the honorable and the
true-hearted submit to temptation, what can we expect from
the—other people.

To conclude; we are all called upon to be careful, and keep
our fore-finger on the trigger of our watchfulness. May I
not remind my fair readers that many a quail dies for them,
and that intempestive collineation hath been too often perpetrated

for their dear sakes. Restrain, O, ye Helens! and
Joans! the ardor of your sacrificing worshippers. Let them
not kill too many. Six, now-a-days, are a sportsman's fortune.
Remember them of the base Jews, who gathered more quail than
were sufficient for immediate consumption, disobeying Moses,
and then rejected the rotting victims, and sighed for the flesh-pots
of Egyptian leeks and onions. And do thou, best Mary!
ever, when thou dippest a minute breast-piece, almost, into
the fading bubble of the sherry at my dexter, playfully, as
thou art wont, be sure thou ask me—“Love, was this bird
killed in season?”