:ntroduction. 21 



the woods and swamps of central New Jersey by thousands, 

 where they were netted by the inhabitants.^ 



Audubon states that he had bought these birds at Pitts- 

 burg " some years ago " for twelve and one-half cents a pair, 

 but that they now sold (1835) in the market at seventy-five 

 cents to one dollar in the eastern cities. 



Abbott believes that, common as this bird still was in New 

 Jersey in 1895, it was as nothing compared to half a century 

 ago; and, judging from old manuscripts which refer presum- 

 ably to this Grouse, they were extremely abundant at one 

 time, or when the country was settled, when " their drumming 

 in the woods would sound often as if every hive of bees was 

 swarming." 



The Pinnated Grouse was found in enormous numbers 

 along the Atlantic coast in suitable regions, and was still 

 more numerous in the interior. Other and larger game was 

 so plentiful that few people ate this bird during the first years 

 of settlement. Audubon says that a friend of his killed forty 

 of these Grouse with a rifle one morning without picking one 

 up; and that when he first went to Kentucky no hunter of 

 that State deigned to shoot them. In Massachusetts they 

 were looked upon with more abhorrence than the crows, 

 because of the injury they did in the orchards by picking off 

 the buds in winter and picking up sowed grain in the fields in 

 spring. Audubon states that his servants preferred fat bacon 

 to the flesh of these birds, which often fed with the domestic 

 fowls. As the deer and Turkeys became scarce, the Grouse were 

 utilized; and twenty -five years later they had been nearly 

 all driven out of Kentucky and had been nearly exterminated 

 in the east, being then so rare in the markets of Boston, 

 Philadelphia and New York that they sold at from five dollars 

 to ten dollars per pair.^ 



Later, as settlement progressed westward, these Grouse 

 were found so abundant in some portions of the west that it 

 was nothing unusual for a person armed with a breech-loader 

 to bag twenty or thirty brace a day.^ 



1 Abbott, C. C: The Birds about us, 1895, pp. 189-191. 



2 Audubon, J. J.: Ornithological Biography, 1S35, Vol. II, pp. 491, 492. 



3 Murphy, John Mortimer: American Game Bird Shooting, 1S82, p. 63. 



