PINNATED GROUSE 213 
wherever the food is, there is the likeliest place for 
the game. In addition to this rule as a guide, we look 
for their fresh tracks among the sandy barberry hil- 
locks and along the numerous patches which intersect 
that remarkable part of the Vineyard called Tisbury 
Plain. Into this, should the birds fly from the hedges, 
as they sometimes do, it is almost impossible to start 
them a second time, as there are no trees or large 
objects to mark their flight. Being mostly covered with 
scrub oak of a uniform height, with occasional mossy 
hollows, it affords them a place of refuge, into which 
they fly for protection, but from which they soon 
emerge, when the danger is passed, to their more 
favourite haunts.” 
This letter was written in December, 1832. 
The ornithologists of the first half of the nineteenth 
century did not differentiate the pinnated grouse of the 
Mississippi Valley from the eastern bird, and spoke 
of the pinnated grouse as even then almost extermi- 
nated from its old range on the Atlantic coast. A con- 
temporary statement of interest as to the heath hen is 
that made by Elisha J. Lewis in “The American Sports- 
man,” published in Pennsylvania, 1857. He says: 
“The prairie hen was, no doubt, at one time widely 
disseminated over our whole country, more particularly 
in those portions interspersed with dry, open plains sur- 
rounded by thin shrubbery or scantily covered with 
trees. Unlike the ruffed grouse, this bird delights in 
the clear, open prairie grounds, and will desert those 
districts entirely which in the lapse of time become 
