THE COMMON QUAIL. Tetrao coturnix, LINNÆUS; La Caille, BUFFON; Die Wachtel, BECHSTEIN. This species is the most common of wild poultry kept in the house. It is rather more than seven inches in length. The beak is short and horn-coloured, dusky in summer, and ash grey in winter, like the partridge's and common fowl's; the iris is olive brown; the feet pale bluish red; on the upper part of the body are dusky and rust-red spots, with some small white streaks; the throat is dusky, surrounded with two chestnut brown bands; the front of the neck and the breast are pale rust red, with some longitudinal dark streaks; the belly is dusky white; the thighs are reddish grey; the quill-feathers are dark grey, crossed by many rust red lines; the tail is short, dark brown, with pale rust red streaks across it. The female differs sensibly; her throat is white, and her breast, paler than that of the male, is spotted with black like the thrush's. HABITATION.--When wild the quail is found throughout the old world. Unlike the other species of poultry, it is a bird of passage, arriving in Europe in May, and departing the end of September. It keeps continually in corn fields, preferring those of wheat. In the house, if allowed to range, its gentleness, neatness, and peculiar motions, are seen to advantage; but it is often kept in a cage of the following make:--A small box two feet long, one foot deep, and four high, of any shape which is preferred; in this are left two or three openings, one for drinking at, the other to give light; besides this all is dark; the bottom is a drawer, which should be covered with sand, and have a seed drawer at one end; the top is of green cloth, for as the quail often springs up it would hurt itself were it of wood. This case should be suspended during the summer outside the window, for the quail sings much more when confined in this manner than if allowed to range the room, where there are many things to call off its attention from its song[123]. When a male without the female is allowed to run about the room, it is always necessary to shut it up in June (the pairing season), or else its ardent feelings tempt it to attack all the other birds, particularly those with a dark plumage, somewhat resembling its own. Larks, for example, it will follow, and pluck out their feathers till they are nearly bare. FOOD.--In a wild state the quail feeds on wheat and other corn, rape-seed, millet, hemp-seed, and the like. It also eats green vegetables, as well as insects, and particularly ants' eggs.