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Show TAMING A FLOCK OF QUAILS. Buckwheat and Gradual Advances Con-. Con-. qner the Wild Birds. ' ' Mrs. D. N. Snyder, of Jefferson town-ihip, town-ihip, saw a lot of quails dusting them-lelves them-lelves under eome currant bushes in the baqk end of her garden. The birds looked look-ed so happy and contented that she thought it would be too bad to disturb them, ft) she returned to the house with-; with-; out pulling the weeds out of a patch of j onions that she had gone there for the I purpose of doing. In an hour or so the quails had disappeared in the tall timothy timo-thy of the adjoining meadow, and Mrs. Snyder scattered some buckwheat around where they had been wallowing! On the following day the birds came there again, gobbled up the buckwheat, and had a good time. . Every day for a week or so Mrs. Snyder scattered grain among the bushes for the quails to feed on, and the birds Boon goi so that they looked for food in, the garden as regularly as they did for a resting place at night out in the woods, back of the big meadow lot. ";' "; One morning the kind hearted woman forgot to throw the buckwheat, but the quails reminded her of her negligence by appearing at the usual hour and making a great fuss and noise because there wasn't any grain In the garden for them to pick up. Mrs. Snyder let the birds hunt for other kinds of food that day, and for several mornings after that she didn't fail to give them a good feed of buckwheat. Then she mineed a morning morn-ing on purpose to see how the quails would act when" they didn't find any groin near the currant bushes, watching from a second story window for them to make their appearance. Promptly on time the whole flock crept under the garden fence from the meadow, ran among the bushes and began be-gan to dodge and flutter about where they had been in the habit of finding the buckwheat. " When they had searched long enough to learn that no grain had been put then) for them the birds piped in low tones, fluttered uneasily, scattered scatter-ed into the vegetable beds and appeared to be very inuoh disappointed. In a little lit-tle while the 'quails gave up the search, assembled under the currant bushes and went to dusting themselves in the soil. Mrs. 8nyder counted fourteen in the flock, and then she went down stairs, got a basinful of buckwheat and tiptoed her way into the garden. ; When she had got as near to the quails ' as she could get without scaring thom Mrs. Snyder flung a handful of buckwheat buck-wheat toward the quiet little flock. It fell among them, and they all scampered scam-pered under the fence and went out of Bight in a hurry. Then she threw some more of the grain on the ground where they had been and secreted herself behind be-hind a row of pea vines. Presently one of the birds ventured to crawl under the fence'into he garden. It soon found the buckwheat and set to filling its crop, and at this tbe other birds took courage, filed from their hiding places and went to picking up the grain as though each was determined to got its share. From her place of concealment Mrs. Snyder flung, a handful of buckwheat into the air so that it fell into the midst of the flock. It scared the birds a little, but they quickly resumed their feeding, and Mrs. Snyder began to whistle to them, flinging more grain into the air as she whistled. That excited their ouri-osity ouri-osity just enough to make them look np for a moment, and Mrs. Snyder emptied the basin and atole away, without letting let-ting the birds see her. She fed thequails in this way for a few days, gradually got them used to her whistle and voice, ' and let them get sight of her by degrees. Inside of a month from the time she first saw the birds in the garden she had them bo well tamed j that they fluttered out of the meadow whenever she called them, ate in her presence and did not seem to fear her at all.: Since then Mrs. Snyder has taken a good deal of comfort with her strange little flock, and she said the other day that the confidence the birds have in her pays her many times over for all the trouble she has made herself in getting the wild little creatures to be as tame aa they are. Scranton (Pa.) Cor. New York Sun. |