DELUDED QUAILS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXIII, Issue 99, 11 May 1901, Page 4

DELUDED QUAILS.

BREAKEAST SIX TIMKS A DAT BY) KLKCTRIC LIGHT. " Nice plump birds, ain't they, sir ?" It was in Leailenhall Market, ami the speaker was a nondescript person, with a suggestion of feathers and the loose hairs of dogs about him. The reference to plumpness applied to many rows of quails displayed on the stall of a poulterer; and the man seemed to gloat lovingly over the arrav of little birds. They were admittedly plump. " I stuffed them birds,'' he continued discursively. '". But they're not stuffed birds, they're real." " Garn !" he remarked with scorn, " I don't mean the coves as fills a bird's' skin with feathers and puts him on a I wire under a glass shade. We stuff j 'em for the market to get em fat. Lor' j bless ye, when them birds come from! Egypt,—that's where they breed 'em, mostly—there ain't a pickin' of flesh on their bones. We feuds 'em up, artificial." " Rather, slow work, isn't it ? You cram them, I suppose, like turkeys?" ! "Who are you getting at, mister? D'ye mean to say you don't know : ow ' they fattens (mails for table? No? Why, it's all done by e-lectric light. Yes, and we gets 'em plump in less'n a week. " You see, when the quails come to us they're in big crates cages like. We take 'em to a big cellar, underground, turns off the electric light, and let 'em 'ave a sleep. Then we turns the light on and give 'em a feed. " Quails, you see, eats fust thing in the morning, and eats 'earty. So they eats a 'eavy breakfast, and then we turns out the lights, and they go to sleep again." A MATTEK OF DUTY. " Seems simple enough. But what makes them fatten so quickly ?" "Why, in two hours we turns on the light again, and the silly birds wakes up and thinks it's to-morrow—-not knowing, d'ye see, wot electric light is. So, as the sun's up, according to their belief, they sets to and 'as another breakfast. Then we turns off the light again, gives 'em another nap, rouses 'em again, 'ave another breakfast, an' there you are. " I've known the birds feed as many as six times of a artei-noon, thinkin' each time they wuk up it was next morning." " How does their appetite last out ? Don't they feel a bit full ?" "Full ain't the word. Stuffed to the neck, they are. But they know' it's their dooty to eat when the sun rises, an' they do it. Some of 'em J that's a bit old and artful, they suspects a bit. I " I've seen an old cock bird squint' up at the light and then at his food, and shake his wings, and peck at the place where 'is stomach is a-givin' 'im trouble. Then he begins to refuse 'is food, and takes to frettin', and won't fatten no more. | " 'Ome sickness, some says it is; but not me. The little beggar 'as dyspepsy, that's all, and goes through the same feelin's as the coves you read about in the papers that 'as saved their lives by takin' to Buffin's Blue Pills for Bilious Blokes. " We don't give 'em no pills-just pick 'em out, wring their necks, and sell 'em to the cheap restorongs."