THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN, OR SHARPTAILED GROUSE. 411 
There is another heading under which to discuss the Prairie 
Chicken, viz., its fitness for domestication. An apparently necessary 
and most profitable adjunct of every farm is a stock of poultry. 
But my experience with four varieties of poultry goes to shew that 
the winter here is far too severe ; late chickens are sure to die, while 
old ones are almost sure to be badly frost-bitten about the head the 
first winter, and even lose their unprotected toes and legs in the 
same way. Their feathers, for want of the regular dust bath, etc., 
become very deplorable and stick so in points and lumps that they 
lose half their non-conducting power. From this it is evident that 
the farmer wants a fowl that is without such unnecessary and deli- 
cate appendages as combs and wattles, has its legs and feet well 
protected from the frost, is able to stand any amount of cold, having 
feathers of duck-like density. The abundance of hawks renders it. 
also desirable that the bird be inconspicuous, not bright colored or- 
white like the common fowls. All this seems to point very clearly 
to the Prairie Chicken. In addition to these it has the great. 
advantage of maturing early ; in ten weeks a Prairie Chicken is: 
full grown, while a common fowl takes thrice as long. The grouse: 
weighs only about three pounds, yet it yields more solid meat than a 
five-pound chicken, and it can fatten on what the chicken will scarcely 
look at, having also the advantage of being able to take at one meal 
enough to last it all day, if necessary, such is the size of its crop. 
Its flesh is of a most delicate flavor, no barn-door fowl] being at all 
to be compared with it, though this might be one of the first things 
to be lost in a state of domestication, 
I cannot say I know it to be capable of domestication ; indeed, I 
know one man who kept one six months, and at the end it was as 
wild as at first, but this was caught when full grown. Yet Audubon 
tamed the Pinnated grouse with little trouble, as did Wilson the 
quail. And I have little doubt that in a generation or two this 
would become manageable. ‘The number of eggs laid would, doubtless, 
increase if eggs were cautiously removed, though, I confess, I found 
them rather jealous, for, on taking six eggs out of a nest of fourteen, 
the rest were deserted. These six eggs were hatched by a hen, but 
earlier than her own eggs, and I found the young grouse all 
crushed. Wilson says, all attempts to raise the young have failed ‘ 
probably for want of proper food. Perhaps he is right. The situa- 
