BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 167 



perhaps in another direction, and on the third the hunters 

 return home with their spoils, to distribute them among friends 

 not so fortunate as to own a gun and a dog, when the double 

 barrel is cleaned and put away, and business resumed. " 



I have introduced this detailed and circumstantial extract 

 from Mr. Washburn's communication as one of the most faith- 

 ful descriptions of a Prairie Chicken hunt that I have ever 

 read, and as representing in all probability not less than two 

 or three hundred other similar and simultaneous parties of 

 hen-killers, conveniently entitled "sportsmen," found for 

 several weeks within the dominion of our young State. No 

 member of the bird family has ever received more universal 

 recognition than this denizen of the broad prairies. From 

 royalty to rags all classes have honored it with a place in the 

 memory if not in the "bag,'" or the stomach, as proof of which 

 we have only to point silently to the motley array of the won 

 drously improved double-barrelled shot-guns, ammunition, 

 pointers, setters, elegant trains of sportsmen's railroad coaches 

 side-tracked for days at a time in the vicinity of the bird's well 

 known haunts "far within our borders. Nothing short of a 

 national jubilee and half -fares, so moves the masses and the 

 classes as the dawning of the morn of the ' 'open season" for 

 shooting Prairie Chickens. Within the period of its history, 

 the species has borne many "common"" names, among which 

 Heath Hen, Prairie Grouse. Prairie Chicken, Boomers, Pinnated 

 Grouse, etc. , and it is now refreshing and restful to learn that 

 the decrees of exact science have finally settled upon "Hen." 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Tail of eighteen feathers; general color varied, but domi- 

 nantly whitish-brown and brownish yellow, almost everywhere 

 with well defined transverse bars of brown on the feathers. 

 Body stout, compact: a tuft of long, pointed feathers on each 

 side of the neck, covering a bare space capable of inflation; 

 tail short, truncated, much graduated; lateral feathers about 

 two- thirds the middle; the feathers stiffened, nearly linear and 

 truncate, scarcely longer than the coverts, and about half the 

 length of the wing. Tarsi covered with feathers anteriorly 

 and laterally to the toes, but bare with hexagonal scutellas 

 behind; middle toe and claw longer than tarsus; toes margined 

 by pectinated processes. A space above the eye provided 

 with a dense, pectinated process in the breeding season, some 

 times separated from the eye by a superciliary space covered 

 with feathers. Bands on body transverse throughout; lan- 

 ceolate feathers of the throat black; upper ones with a central 

 yellowish stripe; eyelids, and a stripe from the nostril along 



-12z 



