quite lack their ordinary wariness. Then the figure-four trap
springs up in the hedgerow and the sedge while the work of
decimation goes more rapidly along. The rabbits can no longer escape
the half-starved dogs, the thinning cover fails to hide the quail
and the song birds betray themselves by singing of the coming
spring.

With the growing scarcity of the game now comes the season of sedge
and field burning. This is done ostensibly to prepare the land for
spring plowing, but really to destroy the last refuge of the quail
and rabbits so that they can be bagged with certainty. All the
negroes of a neighborhood collect for one of these burnings, all
their dogs, and of course all the boys from six years old up. They
surround the field and set it on fire in many places, leaving small
openings for the game to dash out among the motley assembly. I have
seen quail fly out of the burning grass with flaming particles still
attached to them. They alight on the burnt ground too bewildered to
fly again and the boys and dogs pick them up. Crazed rabbits try the
gauntlet amidst the barking curs, shouting negroes and popping guns,
but death is sure and quick. The few quail that may escape have no
refuge from the hawks and nothing to eat, so every battue of this
kind marks the absolute end of the birds in one vicinity; and the
next day the darkies repeat the performance elsewhere.

At this season of the year, the first of May, the blacks are putting
in some of their one hundred working days while the single
breech-loader rusts in the chimney corner. Surely the few birds that
have escaped the foray of the "gang," lived through the hungry days,
and survived their burned homes can now call "Bob White" and mate in
peace. But school is out and the summer sun is putting new life into