IS a small bird, being in length no more than seven inches. The colour of the breast is a dirty pale yellow, and the throat has a little mixture of red: the head is black, and the body and wings have black stripes upon a hazel-coloured ground. Its habits and manner of living resemble those of the partridge, and it is either caught in nets by decoy birds, or shot by the help of the setting-dog, its call being easily imitated by tapping two pieces of copper one against another. The flesh of the Quail is very luscious, and next in flavour to that of the partridge. Quails are birds of passage, the only peculiarity in which they differ from all other of the poultry kind; and such prodigious numbers have sometimes appeared on the western coast of the kingdom of Naples, that one hundred thousand have been caught in one day, within the space of three or four miles. In some parts of the south of Russia they abound so greatly, that at the time of their migration they are caught by thousands, and sent in casks to Moscow and St. Petersburg. The female seldom lays more than six or seven eggs. The ancient Athenians kept this bird merely for the sport of fighting with each other, as game-cocks do, and never ate the flesh. The Quail was that wild fowl which God thought proper to send to the chosen people of Israel as a sustenance for them in the desert. The Chinese Quail is a beautiful little bird, and is often kept in cages in China, for the singular purpose, as it is said, of warming people’s hands in winter; as taking the soft, warm body of the bird in the hand diffuses through it an agreeable warmth. It is also very pugnacious, and is employed in fighting. [Illustration: THE AMERICAN QUAIL, (_Ortyx Virginianus_,)] IS larger than the Common Quail, and is something between a Quail and a Partridge. The CALIFORNIAN QUAIL (_O. Californicus_) is distinguished by its possession of a curious crest or tuft of feathers on the crown of the head. [Illustration: THE RED GROUSE. (_Lagopus scoticus._)] “High on exulting wing the Heath-Cook rose, And blew his shrill blast o’er perennial snows.” ROGERS.