202 GAME BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA. 
of the forests, and are found only in the western portions of 
North America amid the high mountain ranges. By having dis- 
tensible sacs of bare skin upon the sides of the neck, and a tail 
consisting of twenty broad feathers, these birds cannot properly 
be included in the same genus with the Spruce Grouse, C. cana- 
densis and C. franklnz, which have no air sacs, and only sixteen 
rectrices in the tail. These characters are in my opinion strictly 
generic and too important and conspicuous to permit the two 
groups to be separated only subgenerically, but are as striking 
and trenchant as any that separate these birds themselves from 
those in other genera of the subfamily. 
KEY TO THE SPECIES. 
A. Under parts of adult males, mostly slate 
color. 
a. Tail with distinct gray band at tip. 
a’. General colors, light. Tail band very 
broad. 
DUSKY GROUSE. 
6'. General colors, dark, almost black. l 
D. obscurus. 
SOOTY GROUSE, 
Tail band narrow. D. 0. fulige- 
nNOSUS. 
RICHARDSON’S 
GROUSE. 
. Tail with ip. . 
6, Tail without band at tip DV oe 
SONT. 
GENUS CANACHITES 
(Greek, xavaxew, Lanacheo, to be noisy). 
Canachites, Stejn. Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., vol. viii., 1885, p. 410. 
Type, Tetrao canadensis, Linn. 
Head without crest. Tail moderately long, nearly square at 
tip, composed of sixteen feathers. No air sacs on sides of neck. 
Toes naked, scaly, and fringed along the sides. Size small. 
Two species only are included in this genus, the common 
Spruce or Canada Grouse, and Franklin’s Grouse, the latter 
dwelling on the high mountain ranges of the western side of 
North America. They are quite different in their pattern of 
coloration, and the males are characteristically marked and 
easily distinguishable, 
