e 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
the bare feet of the half-grown boys, and the halfbreed bird dogs
are busier than they were even in winter. The young rabbits are
killed before they get out of the nest, and the quail eggs must be
hidden rarely well that escape both the eyes of the boys and the
noses of the dogs. After all it is not surprising that but three
bevies remained of the sixty. Doubtless they would not, except that
nature is very kind to her own in the sunny South.

Not every white man in the South is a sportsman or even a shooter;
many are purely business men who have said let the "nigger" do as he
likes so long as he raises cotton and buys our goods. But Dixie has
her full share of true men of the out-of-doors and they have sworn
in downright Southern fashion that this thing has got to end.
Nevertheless their problem is deep and puzzling. In Alabama they
made an effort and a beginning. They asked for a law requiring every
man to obtain written permission before entering the lands of
another to hunt and shoot; they asked for a resident license law
taxing every gun not less than five dollars a year; for a shortened
season, a bag limit, and a complete system of State wardens.
Unfortunately, a lot of white farmers were in the same range as the
blacks, and being hit, too, they raised a great