for not only are his feathers closer and more compact, but he is rounder and plumper in proportion to his length; and when well-grown and full-fed, weighs from seven to nine ounces, although he rarely attains the maximum.

His bill is strong and horny, the upper mandible considerably arched; and the whole instrument constituting an apparatus calculated to break the shells of the hardest seeds, and even the kernels of hips and haws, as well as a weapon capable of inflicting severe wounds on his rivals; for he is scarcely less pugnacious than the gamecock; and is still kept for the same purpose by the Chinese and Malays, as he was of old by the polished democrats of Athens.

His eye is large, black, and very lively. The back of his head, neck, shoulders, wing-coverts, and rump, are all beautifully mottled with brown. black, and chesnut, each feather having a yellowish margin, and a dark irregular line, diverging from the point towards the stem. The quills and tail are of a rich reddish brown, broadly barred with black.

In the cock-bird, the cheeks and chin are snow-white, with the exception of a dark streak, running upward from the angle of the eyes. In the hen they are a bright ochreous yellow. The breast, in both, is white, freckled with wavy lines of black, something like arrow-heads in shape, pointing downward toward the vent; the legs are protected by strong scales, of an olive brown, and the male bird has rather a formidable spur.

Otherwise there is no distinction between the sexes, which are similar in size and shape; except, perhaps, that the colors of the hen are some what less vivid and distinct than those of the male, as is generally the case in the animal creation.

It will be seen at once, from this description, that our American quail is a most beautiful little bird; but his beauties do not consist merely in his plumage, but in his gait, his pretty pert movements, his great vivacity, his joyous attitudes, his constant and cheerful activity.

He is in all respects the most social, the merriest, and most amiable, of his tribe. During the breeding season, he alone, of the gallinaceous tribe, makes

wood and mead resound with his shrill, merry whistle-whence our country folk have framed to him a name, Bob White, from some fancied similarity of sound-cheering his faithful partner during the toils of incubation.

Afterward, when the bevies are collected, as he runs from the huddle in which he has passed the night, he salutes his brethren, perhaps thanks his Creator for the pleasant dawn, with the most cheerful noise that can be fancied, a short, quick, happy chirping, "and seems to be," to borrow the words of the inimitable Audubon,--I quote from memory alone," the happiest little creature in the universe."

Unlike the young broods of the woodcock, which are mute, save the twitter with which they rise, the bevies of quail appear to be attached to each other by tender affection. If dispersed by accidental causes, either in pursuit of their food, or from being flushed by some casual intruder, so soon as their first alarm has passed over, they begin calling to each other with a small plaintive note, quite different from the amorons whistle of the male bird, and from their merry day-break cheeping, and, each one running toward the sound and repeating it at intervals, they soon collect themselves together into one happy little family, the circle of which remains unbroken, until the next spring, with the genial weather, brings matrimonial ardors, pairing and courtship, and the hope of future bevies.

If, however, the ruthless sportsman have been among them, with his welltrained 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 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 a house in which I was passing a portion of the summer, 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, afterwards, 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.

The quail is not only the most sociable of his tribe in reference to his fellows, but is by far the most tameable and friendly in his disposition as regards the general enemy and universal tyrant-man.

In the winter season, when the ground is so deeply covered with snow as to render it impossible for them to obtain their customary food, the seeds, namely, of the various grasses which they love the most, or the grains which lie scattered in the stubbles, they come naturally into the vicinity of man's dwellings, and it is by no means an unusual sight to perceive them running about among the domestic fowls in the barn-yard, and flying up, if suddenly disturbed, to perch under the rafters of some barn or out-house, seemingly fearless and confident in such seasons of protection.

At this moment, I have a bevy of thirteen birds, lying within three or four hundred yards of the room in which I sit writing, under the shelter of a rough wooded bank, whereon I have been feeding them with buck-wheat since the heavy snows have fallen, and they have now become so tame that they will allow me to approach within 20 paces of the spot where they are fedrunning about and picking up the triangular seeds, perfectly unconcerned at my presence. As soon, however, as the spring shall have commenced, and the bevy separated themselves into pairs, their wild habits will return upon them and I shall see no more of iny little friends, until I meet them next autumn in the brown stubble-field, no longer in the light of a protector.

The quail pairs early in the month of February, if the winter have been a mild one, and the ground at that period is free from its snowy winter covering; if, on the contrary, the spring be late and backward, his courtship is deferred until March-sometimes even so late as to the beginning of April.

As soon as he has chosen to himself a mate, the happy pair retreat to wide, open, rushy meadows, where the conformation of the country affords them such retirement, among the tussocks of which they love to bask in the soft spring sunshine. Where the land is higher, and is broken into knolls and gulleys, you will find them at this season on the grassy banks beside some sheltered hedgerow, or along the green and shrubby margin of some sequestered retreat, but never in thick woodlands, and rarely in open fields.

Most birds, so soon as they have paired, proceed at once to the duties of nidification and the rearing of their young; it seems to me, however, that the quail spends some time in pairs before proceeding to this task; for I have frequently seen them paired so early as the twentieth of February; yet I have never found the hen sitting, or a nest with eggs in it, during spring snipe shooting, though I have often flushed the paired birds on the same ground with the long-billed emigrants.

I have never, indeed, seen a quail's nest earlier than the middle of May, and have often found them sitting so late as the end of July.

Their nest is inartificial, made of grasses, and situate, for the most part, under the shelter of a stump or tussock in some wild meadow, or near the bushy margin of some clover-field or orchard. The hen lays from ten to two-and-twenty eggs; and is relieved at times, in hatching them, by the male bird; who constantly keeps guard around her, now sitting on the bough of the nearest tree, now perched on the top rail of a snake fence, making the woods and hills resound with his loud and cheery whistle.

The period of the quail's incubation I do not know correctly; the young birds run the moment they burst from the egg; and it is not uncommon to see them tripping about with pieces of the shell adhering to their backs.

The first brood hatched, and fairly on foot, the hen proceeds at once to the preparation of a second nest; and committing the care of the early younglings to her mate, or rather dividing with him the duties of rearing the first and hatching the second brood, she devotes herself incessantly to her maternal duties.

So far as I can ascertain, the quail

almost invariably raises a second, and sometimes, I believe, a third brood, in a single season. Hence, if unmolested, they increase with extraordinary rapidity, when the seasons are propitious; and hence you frequently find young birds, in two or three stages of maturity, in a single bevy, and under the protection of a single brace of parents.

The quail cannot endure severe cold weather, hence he is never found far to the eastward of Boston; I have never heard of his being found at all in the States of Maine and New-Hampshire; and can assert of my own knowledge: that, in the former state, he does not exist, if elsewhere, east of the river Kennebeck. In Lower Canada. he is unknown; and it is only within a few years that he has become abundant, and a continual resident in the upper provinces, along the northern shores of the Niagara and of Lake Erie.

I cannot, however, satisfy myself entirely that this is the effect of climate, as it may be the consequence of cultivation, on the skirts of which only is the quail found-with one exception, the great prairies of the west, which whether natural meadows, or, as some persons believe, the remnants of aboriginal civilization-present to the quail all the comforts which he derives from cultivation and the vicinity of man's dwellings-grass-seeds, I mean, and open sunshine.

In the forest, the quail is never found, I unless when that forest is girded about with settlements, and interspersed with partial clearances and buckwheat or corn-fields, when he will ramble away during the heat of summer noontide into the cool, green retreats of mountain woodlands.

I have never seen, nor have I heard of a nest placed in a wood; and, were it not for the prairies, which I suppose to have been their haunt and feedingground for ages, I should be at a loss to conceive where either the quail or the woodcock existed, when all the seaboard of America, and, for leagues upon leagues inward, the whole face of the country was covered with primeval wilderness, since neither of the birds, as I have before stated, are ever found in the wild forest, and both make their appearance almost immediately when sunshine is let into those deep solitudes by the settler's axe, and the brown stub

ble has succeeded to the leaf-carpet of the dim and steamy wilderness.

But a few years ago, the woodcock was found in Maine, only in the vicinity of Portland and the oldest settlements; he is now killed abundantly, in the intervales, as they are called in that region, on the Kennebeck, and is extending himself slowly but surely eastward, as the forest recedes before the lumberman. He is, however, still a rare bird on the waters of the Penobscot, though there are ranges of swampy coverts, miles and miles in length, of that very soil and nature which he loves the best; and though I have never seen lying or feeding-grounds in New-Jersey_superior to the oak-islands, above Indian Oldtown, upon the beautiful river I have mentioned.

Five years have passed, however, since I shot in those regions, and found it hard work to bag a couple or two of cock on ground which here would have yielded forty or fifty birds; and I should not be surprised to learn that in the interim, they have become plentiful in those very woods. That it is not climate which influences the woodcock, is evident from the fact, that they have abounded for many years in the vicinity of Windsor and Annapolis, in NewBrunswick, where the climate is much colder; but the reign of cultivation more widely extended, because far older, than in the eastern parts of Maine.

It may then, in some measure, be attributed to the same cause, namely, the prevalence of unbroken wilderness, and the absence of large grain fields, that the quail is not found in our easternmost states; and if it be true, as Latham states, that the quail is found in New-Brunswick and Nova Scotia, this might be assumed, and not climate, as the established cause of his aversion to the northeastern country.

But I believe it is not true; for, of many good and staunch sportsmen, with whom I am. acquainted at St. John, and elsewhere in the British Provinces, I have found none who have shot this bird therein.

I have said above, that the quail, in propitious seasons, increases with extraordinary rapidity; I will now add, that in unfavorable years, he often comes to the very verge of extinction.

Long severe snows, when the coun

try is buried many feet deep, and he can procure no sustenance, save from the precarious charity of man, famishes him outright-heavy drifts, especially when succeeded by a partial thaw, and a frost following the thaw, stifle him in whole bevies, encased in icy prisonhouses.

It is the peculiar habit of this bird to lie still, squatted in concentric huddles, as they are technically called, composed of the whole bevy, seated like the radii of a circle, with their tails inward, so long as snow, sleet, or rain, continues to fall. So soon as it clears off, and the sun shines out, with a simultaneous effort, probably at a preconcerted signal, they all spring up at once, with an impetus and rush so powerful, as carries them clear through a snow-drift many feet in depth; unless it be skimmed over by a frozen crust, which is not to be penetrated by their utmost efforts. In this latter case, when the storm has been general over a large extent of country, the quails are not unfrequently reduced so nearly to extinction, that but a bevy or two will be seen for years, on ground where previously they have been found in abundance; and at such time, if they be not spared and cherished, as they will be by all true sportsmen, they may be destroyed entirely throughout a whole region.

This was the case especially through all this section of the country, in the tremendous winter of 1835-36, when these birds which had been, previously, very abundant, were almost annihilated, and would have been so, doubtless, but for the anxiety which was felt generally, and the energetic means which were taken to preserve them.

Another peril, which, at times, decimates the breed for a season, is a sudden and violent land-flood, in June and July, which drowns the young birds, or a continuance of cold showery wea

ther in those and the preceding months which addles the eggs and destroys the early bevy. This is, however, but a partial evil, as the quail rears a second brood, and, as I have before observed sometimes a third; so that in this case the number of birds for the season is diminished without the tribe being endangered.

The open winters which have prevailed latterly have been exceedingly favorable to the increase of this beautiful and prolific little bird. Never, perhaps, have they been more abundant than they were last autumn; and though there has been more than an average of snow thus far during the present winter, it has not been heavily drifted for the most part; it has not laid on the ground many consecutive days, and it has not, hitherto, been crusted once.

The sun is now beginning to gain considerable power; the season is rapidly advancing toward spring, and, with a little care in feeding and preserving the birds from poachers and trappers, we have every prospect of yet a larger supply next autumn.

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In my next paper-for I feel that I am already running somewhat out of bounds-I shall point out where, in my opinion, the present laws for their protection are inoperative and inadequate, and how they may be simplified and amended; I shall touch upon that much-disputed point their domestic and internal migrations, in relation to which I have collected some curious facts, which are not, I believe, generally known, and which may prove interesting; and, lastly, I shall dwell at length on the best method of quailshooting, with the results of some days' sport, from Connecticut so far southward as Maryland, which is the southernmost limit of my sporting experience in the United States.

The Cedars, January, 1846.

THE system of revenue based upon import duties seems too firmly established to be shaken, and, therefore, in the consideration of this subject, we shall assume that this mode of indirect taxation will be, and ought to be the great financial resource of the federal government. Yet the habitual association, in the mind, of revenue and tariff leads to a certain degree of confusion, which we ought to dispel at the outset, by remembering that they have no natural connection. A tariff is only one mode out of many of collecting a revenue, and it will greatly assist our investigation if, for the present, we place the question of revenue quite out of sight, as if that were not needed, or were otherwise supplied. This leaves us free to consider the operation of duties apart from their object, and to inquire whether, in themselves they are useful, and if not, why, and how far they are prejudicial.

Let us suppose, as a starting point, that there is not a single duty or other restriction upon traffic in the whole world, but an universal and absolute free trade, entirely untrammelled, and left to the wants and caprices of every body. It is plain, that, under these circumstances, there would soon take place, on every side, a mutually beneficial exchange of commodities; that labor would everywhere be applied in the most productive manner; and that the aggregate of wealth would increase with greater rapidity than upon any other conditions. The advantages of free trade, on a large scale, are completely illustrated by those on a small one. If the traffic of a country, or state, is most profitable when free, so is that of a continent, or the world. For they are both made up of individual transactions, differing only in number and magnitude. All trade is only exchange; its theory is mutual benefit, its inducement mutual wants, and it is guarded on both sides by mutual cupidity. This is true of great trades, as well as small ones, and of exchanges made across an ocean as well as across a counter.

These general views will not be contradicted, but they are looked upon as abstractions, having little to do with the state of affairs on this planet. Let us then bring our hypothesis into more practical limits.

Let us, for the sake of simplicity, separate from the list of nations two leading commercial countries, such as England and America, and contemplate their relations to each other only. Let us assume that a system of free trade has hitherto prevailed between them, until England, instigated, perhaps, by jealousy, and a noisy, patriotic, delusive desire to be independent-or for some other cause not necessary to be known— concludes to abandon, to some extent, the principles of freedom, and to impose duties on the imports coming from this country. The consequence is, of course, a diminution of traffic and its proceeds. We, harmed and stung by the movement, begin to inquire what we shall do. Why," says some ingenious empiric, "let us, also, lay a tariff and retaliate; let us protect ourselves, and keep her out of our ports as she drives us from hers. Thus shall we neutralize the harm done, bring her to terms, protect home industry, and be independent of foreign labor." But stay a moment; let us consider this theory of protective duties and reciprocal tariffs, and not be carried away suddenly by plausibilities. Will the reader indulge our argument with his careful attention?

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If an import duty is laid upon something which cannot be produced at home, the evident consequence will be to raise its price and diminish its consumption. If laid upon something which can be produced at home, but only at a greater cost than the imported article, the duty will not begin to operate as a protection until it exceeds, or at least equals, the difference between the cost of the imported and the home production. When it goes beyond this difference, all the excess is so much protection. When it becomes so great that there is no longer any inducement to import, and the demand has fallen