552 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
their natural range, whenever the alfalfa is green, these 
birds resort to it, and for a part of the year it seems to 
constitute one of their chief foods. 
The hen prairie chicken laid ten eggs and then died, 
showing intense infection with coccidia, which appears 
to be the bane of so many of our native birds, including 
the domestic turkey. Five of the eggs were hatched 
under a bantam hen, but all died in Professor Hodge’s 
absence from home. He was promised eggs or breed- 
ing stock in prairie chickens for the following year, 
and hoped to experiment with them. 
In 1909, however, circumstances prevented his work 
on the problem. He reared three ruffed grouse and 
fourteen quail, and in 1910, owing to the pressure of 
affairs he turned over his breeding stock to the Massa- 
chusetts Commission. 
While Professor Hodge was doing this work at 
Worcester, the superintendent of the Sutton Hatchery, 
the Massachusetts Game Farm, was studying the same 
problems. The results obtained were not great in the 
number of birds, but much was learned as to the most 
serious disease likely to be met with, and the adapt- 
ability of quail and grouse to domestication. It was 
found that disease rather than the method of feeding 
is the controlling factor in rearing the young. One 
hundred and twenty-two ruffed grouse were hatched, 
but all except 2 birds were lost, though 11 lived to 
the age of seven weeks. Many of the deaths were due 
to coccidium, and others to what is called by the writer 
“brooder pneumonia,” and the inference drawn from 
