406 THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN, OR SHARPTAILED GROUSE. 
early spring they begin to drop off, just an odd one adhering here: 
and there. In a week or two they are all gone, and during tho. 
summer the toes are clean and smooth. After the second or third 
week of the young one’s lives, (that would be mid-August or earlier) 
both young and parents begin to show a row of growing scales along 
each toe. These grow with the growth of the chicks, and by October 
the birds are full grown, as are their toe combs and those of the 
parents. Then, since these combs exist only in winter, it is natural to: 
suppose they are meant to act as snowshoes, and to stay the bird from 
slipping on the crust and icy limbs of the trees whose browse forms. 
its winter food. These siow combs continue in perfection during 
the six months of winter, but with the first return of warm weather 
they are shed. 
The tail feathers, of which I have already spoken, are worthy of 
notice. They are exceedingly stiff and I may say sonorous. When 
the male is strutting before the female, or when either is shot and 
dying, the tail is rapidly opened and shut, the stiff quills making a 
loud noise like a porcupine’s quills, or lke shaking a newspaper, 
The muscles for expanding the tail seem to be very largely developed. 
The chickens winter in the dense bush, but in spring, ere yet the 
snow is gone, they scatter over the prairies, where alone they are 
found in summer. They are now very shy, for only the shy and 
wary ones have successfully run the gauntlet of such winter hunters 
as owls, foxes, wolves, martens, Indians, etc. 
Their advent on the still snow-covered plains might be reckoned 
premature and fatal to many, but they tind a good friend in the 
wild rose. It is abundant everywhere, and the red hips, unlike 
other fruit, continue to hang on the stiff stems, high above the 
damage of wet and earth. It grows most abundantly on the high 
sandy knolls, where the snow is thinnest, so here the grouse meet 
and are fed. In this section of the North-West stones or gravel are 
almost unknown, so birds requiring such for digestive purposes 
would be in a dilemma, but that the stones in the rose hips answer 
perfectly, thus the hip supplies them with both millstones and grist 
at once, the flesh at the same time receiving a most delicate flavor. 
While from the same cause the gizzard of a newly-killed grouse is of 
a most pleasing odor of rose. 
It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the rose to this. 
