BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 391 



As the forests are cut off and the land thus unfitted for the 

 Ruffed Grouse it becomes better fitted for the Heath Hen. 

 Why have we so long neglected the opportunity to propagate 

 and multiply this indigenous species? The survival of the 

 Heath Hen upon the island of Martha's Vineyard, after it 

 has been extirpated elsewhere, leaves its fate in the hands of 

 the people of Massachusetts. Let us hope that they will accept 

 this trust and spare no pains to preserve this noble game bird 

 and restore it to its former range. 



This eastern Grouse was not distinguished from the western 

 Pinnated Grouse or Prairie Chicken until 1885, when Brewster 

 described and named the eastern form from specimens taken 

 on Martha's Vineyard. Some authors appear to regard the 

 Heath Hen as a woodland bird, but I have found it pre- 

 eminently a bird of almost treeless or bushy plains, although 

 it is seen occasionally in the woods. The experience of most 

 observers agree with my own. To-day on Martha's Vineyard 

 it is mainly an inhabitant of open lands and shrubby growths. 

 It is not partial to heavy timber or pine coverts, such as the 

 Ruffed Grouse prefers, but frequents dry, sandy or gravelly 

 lands, covered by low-growing vegetation. It sometimes goes 

 to the more sheltered portions of the oak groves during late 

 autumn and in winter, after heavy snowfalls, for the sake of 

 the acorns that it finds there. The region which it now mainly 

 inhabits on Martha's Vineyard (some forty square miles) has 

 been stripped of most of its timber by fire and the axe. This 

 tract is more or less surrounded by, and occasionally inter- 

 spersed with, farms or cleared lands. The soil is chiefly sandy 

 and dry, and generally rather level, with some low rolling hills 

 and low ridges. Oaks of several species, bayberry, dwarf 

 sumac and other shrubby vegetation (all more or less dwarfed) 

 are characteristic of its chosen haunts; and small pitch pines are 

 scattered over the plains. The Heath Hen formerly inhabited 

 somewhat similar "barrens" on Long Island and in New Jer- 

 sey. It also frequents grass fields and open cultivated lands. 

 It is an adept at concealment in such situations, and in case 

 of danger the members of a flock will squat so closely, with 

 heads and necks drawn in or stretched along the ground, that 



