Carver would have missed under such
circumstances, and the lad came nowhere near hitting the game.

So swift was the flight of the bird, that as soon as the trigger was
pulled and Sam looked for it it had vanished. That man who handles the
rifle must be wonderfully skillful to bring down one of those birds on
the wing.

It is curious how the name of the common quail is disputed and varied.
There are plenty who will insist that I should have called this bird a
partridge, when, in point of fact, there is no true representative of
the partridge in America.

The spruce partridge is the Canada grouse; the partridge of New England
is the ruffed grouse; the partridge of the Middle and Southern States is
the quail, of which several varieties are called partridges; while in
Europe the birds which are called quails are in reality partridges.

Without tiring my readers by attempting anything like a scientific
discussion of the question, I may say there are a dozen species of
quails found in North and Central America and the West Indies, and Mr.
Baird proposes that, as neither the name quail, partridge, nor pheasant
is properly given to any American bird, the species to which I refer
should be called the Bob White.

If this should be done, the smallest urchin will be able to recognize
the species from its peculiar call.

Sam Harper would have been glad indeed if he could have secured one of
these delicious birds for supper, but there was little prospect of
doing so. The game looks so much like the brown and mottled leaves among
which it searches for food, that a hunter would almost place his foot
upon one without observing it, while the nest of the quail or partridge
is almost as impossible to find as the remains of an elephant in Ceylon,
where it is said no such remains have ever been discovered.

One of the lessons Sam had learned from his father was to reload his gun
immediately after firing it, so as to be ready for any emergency.
Accordingly, before stirring from his place, he threw out the shell from
his breech-loader and replaced it with a new cartridge.

Just as he did so, he heard the report of a gun only a short distance to
the left, at a point where Herbert Watrous should have been.

"He's scared up something," was the natural conclusion of Sam, who
smiled as he added; "I wonder whether he could hit a bear a dozen feet
off with that wonderful Remington of his. It's a good weapon, and I wish
I owned one; but I w