It affords no sport, and it is never wise to waste a minute on
it. If by chance it rises whilst you are beating for Partridges
or other Quail, well and good ; but it is an inveterate runner,
scarcely to be flushed without dogs, running persistently even
before these, and when put up, usually dropping within fifteen
or at most twenty yards before you can well shoot it with an
ordinary charge without blowing it to pieces. Without dogs it
is extremely difficult to induce it to rise even out of a single
tuft of grass, which you may almost kick to pieces before the
little wretch will accept your " notice to quit."
The most remarkable point in the life-history of these Bustard-
Quails is the extraordinary fashion in which amongst them the
position of the sexes is reversed. The females are the larger
and handsomer birds. The females only call, the females only
fight—natives* say that they fight for the males, and probably
this is true. What is certain is that, whereas in the case of almost
all the other Game Birds it is the males alone that can be caught
in spring-cages, &c, to which they arc attracted by the calls of
othei males, and to which they come in view to fighting, in this
species no males will ever come to a cage baited with a male,
whereas every female within hearing rushes to a cage in which
a female is confmcd,-f- and if allowed to meet during the
breeding season, any two females will fight until one or other is
dead or nearly so.
The males, and the males only, as we have now proved in
numberless cases, sit upon the eggs, the females meanwhile
* Col. Tickcll says :—
" The Koles and Uriyas told me it was the lien bird which makes this singular
call, and that she is not only (as in right of her sex) more loquacious, but absolutely
more pugnacious than her worse half, who appears, in remarkable contrast to all
other game or gallinaceous birds, to enjoy an ignoble sinecure in all matters of
courtship and connubial arrangements. The hens, in fact, about the commencement
of the rains, after a round game of fighting (which lasts for a week or so), select
their bridegrooms, with whom 'to hear is to obey,' and so set up house for
themselves. Truly a Jerry Sneak kind of affair altogether on the part of these
husbands."
+ Dr. Jeidon long ago gave an accurate account of the capture of the females of
this species. He said :—
" The hen birds are most pugnacious, especially about the breeding season, and
this propensity is made use of in the south of India to effect their capture. For
this purpose a small cage, with a decoy bird, is used, having a concealed spring
compartment, made to fall by the snapping of a thread placed between the bars of
the cage. It is set on the ground in some thick cover carefully protected. The
decoy bird begins her loud purring call, which can be heard a long way off, and any
females within car-shot run rapidly to the spot, and commence fighting with the
caged bird striking at the bars. This soon breaks the thread, the spring cover
falls, ringing a small bell at the same time, by which the owner, who remains
concealed near at hand, is warned of a capture ; and he runs up, secures his prey,
and sets the cage again in another locality In this way I have known twelve to
twenty birds occasionally captured in one day, in a patch of thick bushy jungle, in
the Camat ic, where alone I have known this practice carried on. The biids that
are caught in this way are all females, and in most eases are birds laying eggs at
the time, for I have frequently known instances of some eight or ten of those
captured so far advanced in the process as to lay their eggs in the bag in which
they weie carried before the bird-catcher had reached uiy huu^e."
larking about, calling and fighting, without any care for their
obedient mates ; and lastly, the males, and the males only, I
believe, tend and are to be flushed along with the young brood.
This seems a strange departure from what we might call the
plan of creation ; but nature is full of these surprises. She
goes on (like Babbage's calculating machine) working so long
and so steadily on one formula, that you make up your mind
that this is a fundamental law of her machinery, and then
suddenly (like the machine) she makes a great jump, and a
wholly different formula comes for a brief space into operation,
and then again the old law resumes its sway.
Almost throughout the higher sections of the animal kingdom
you have the males fighting for the females, the females caring
for the young; here, in one insignificant little group of tiny
birds, you have the ladies fighting duels to preserve the chastity
of their husbands, and these latter sitting meekly in the nursery
and tending the young. It is, to our ideas, a very odd arrangement,
because we have become so thoroughly imbued with the
spirit of the opposite one ; but it answers apparently just as
well, so far as the interests of the race are concerned, as that
one with which we are so familiar, and on which we pin our
faith ; and in this and many similar cases it has often seemed to
me that nature mutely warned mankind against dogmatism
and against the foolish, though all too prevalent, belief that only
what we know and are used to can be good, and that ncithcr
government nor society can get along equally well under any
laws and forms but just those to which we have become
accustomed.
To return to our Quails : Tickcll says that they are "daintily
flavoured birds." Jerdon, that " the flesh is excellent, mixed
brown and white, succulent and tasty." The upper layer of
flesh on the breast is no doubt darker than the lower, but dark
or light, it is dry, and by no means tasty according to my ideas ;
in fact, it is precisely like that of a hapless Common Quail that
has been carried about in a closely-closed basket, without room
to move or fresh air, and with very little or no food or water,
for three or four days.
ALTHOUGH TO A small extent migratory, a few pairs appearing
during the rainy season in the drier districts of the North-
Western Provinces, Eastern Rajputana, and the Punjab,
Cis-Sutlej, in places where they are never seen from December
to the end of June, still the great majority, I believe, are
everywhere permanent residents ; and, though slightly varying
their haunts and feeding grounds as the seasons change, yet
always breed in the same immediate vicinity in which they have
spent the rest of the year.
They may have two broods in the year,"but in Upper India
and the Central Provinces I have only found or known of the