210 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
henne, later changed in pronunciation to héth’n. The 
bird was long abundant in Massachusetts, in the open, 
brushy country around the seacoast, where, no doubt, 
it fed, as do its descendants to-day, at Martha’s Vine- 
yard, on acorns, berries, grass and insects. It was 
well known in New England in the first quarter of the 
nineteenth century, but disappeared soon after that. 
The old New England writers speak of the heath 
cocke as common, so that, according to Wood, “Hee 
that is a husband and will be stirring betime may kill 
halfe a dozen in a morning.” 
Mr. William Brewster, in his interesting and com- 
plete paper, entitled “The Birds of the Cambridge 
Region of Massachusetts,” says: 
“T have been permitted to quote the following in- 
teresting passage from ‘Notes of conversations with 
Eliza Cabot, written down by her son, J. E. C. (abot),’ 
and printed for private circulation in 1904: ‘T recol- 
lect the western prairie grouse in this part of the coun- 
try. I saw one once in Newton; and once after I was 
married, your father went down to the cape fishing, 
and in the woods there I saw a grouse very near me 
and saw him puff up that orange they have on the 
side of the neck.’ Eliza Cabot was born on April 17, 
1791, and married about 1811. Her granddaughter, 
Mrs. Charles Almy, thinks it probable that she saw 
the grouse in Newton about the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century, and the one on the ‘cape’ (Cape Cod, 
no doubt) about 1812. That both birds were heath 
hens can scarcely be doubted, for there is no evidence 
