THOUSANDS OF QUAIL.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 41, 12 November 1907, Page 2

THOUSANDS OF QUAIL.

The town of Nicolaieff recently suffered (says tho Odessa correspondent of the "Daily Express") from a-plague of quail. More than ten thousand birds, dead and alive, Were liarvested in tho town .and suburbs after a thunderstorm of exceptional violence. Tho thunderstorm continued for a considerable time, and rain fell in torrentsi While tho town was boing illuminated by the almost continuous and vivid lightning Hashes, quail, dead and alive, were observed falling and helplessly fluttering in nearly every street and courtyard. Men, women, and children immediately became oblivious to the deluge and the danger of being struck by lightning. Even tho drosky drivers abandoned their horses to join in _ the universal scramble, bagging the quail in tho upturned skirts of their long gaberdines. Tho unusual violenco of the storm must have beaten up in a myriad flock tho great mimbors of quail that' haunt tho marshy and reedy reaches about, the confluence of the Bong and the Ingul, which make a peninsula of Nicolaicff. The birds were evidently exhausted by their enforced flight, and many of them were apparently killed by the lightning.