42 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
stances, as grain, nuts, and seeds, on which the birds 
very largely feed. 
The wings are generally short and rounded, and the 
flight, while often extremely swift, is more or less heavy 
and labored and seldom greatly protracted. In some 
species certain feathers of the wing are enormously 
developed. 
The tail varies extremely. In some species it is very 
long and pointed, in others extremely short; again nar- 
row but long, or less long and very wide. In the pea- 
cock, one of the large and showy pheasants, the coverts 
of the tail greatly exceed the quills in length. In the 
domestic fowl the tail develops a number of oddities. 
In the blackcock the quills on the outer sides are curi- 
ously bent outward, whence one of its names, Lyrurus 
—lyre-tailed. 
In the grouse and the partridges, the metatarsus, that 
portion of the “leg” which is without the body, and 
which in most birds is not covered with feathers but 
scales, is short, whereas in such birds as the turkey or 
the pheasant it is relatively much longer. This so-called 
leg is really a part of the bird’s foot, and corresponds to 
that part of the foot in man which lies between the 
ankle and the toes, and in the horse to that portion 
which lies between the hock and the pastern—the can- 
non bone. 
In the pheasants, quails and partridges the feet are 
naked, but in the grouse they are always more or less 
protected by a covering of hairlike feathers, not un- 
like those found on the feet of certain hawks and owls. 
