"^^isgo"'] PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 521 



renders them shy and induces them to fly long ere yet the sportsman 

 has come near enough to be dangerous. 



Like most of the members of its family, the Prairie Chicken spends 

 the winter nights in the snow, which is always soft and penetrable in 

 the woods, although out on the plains it is beaten by the wind into 

 drifts of ice-like hardness. As the evening closes in the birds fly down 

 from the trees and either dive headlong into a drift or run about a little 

 a;nd select a place before going under. The bed is generally about G 

 inches from the surface and a foot long from the entrance. Each indi- 

 vidual prepares his own place, so that a flock of a dozen chickens may 

 be scattered over a space of 50 yards square. By the morning each 

 bird's breath has formed a solid wall of ice in front of it, so that it in- 

 variably goes out at one side. The great disadvantage of the snow bed 

 is, that when there the birds are more likely to become the prey of foxes 

 and other predaceous animals, whose sagacious nostrils betray the very 

 spots beneath which the unsuspecting bird is soundly slumbering. I am 

 inclined to think this is the only chance a fox has of securing one of the 

 old birds, so wary are they at all other times. 



As the winter wanes it is not uncommon for a snowstorm to be ac- 

 companied by sleet. The storm at once drives the chickens into the 

 drifts and afterwards levels the holes they formed in entering. The 

 freezing of the sleet then forms a crust which resists all attempts at es- 

 cape on the part of the birds, many of which, according to the account 

 of hunters, are starved and thus perish miserably. I met with a single 

 instance of this myself. 



Before the winter is over, many of the birds, by continuously pulling 

 off frozen browse, have so worn their bills that when closed there is a 

 large opening right through immediately behind the hook.* Early in 

 April the few that have survived the rigors and perils of their winter 

 life spread over the prairie once more and soon scatter to enter on their 

 duties of reproduction. 



The growth and shedding of the pectinations on the toes I have re- 

 corded at length, and not having heard of any use for them, conceived 

 the idea which I have already published (1883), that they are intended 

 to act as snowshoes, and the fact that they grow in the fall and con- 

 tinue in perfection all winter, only dropping off after the snow is gone, 

 justifies this conclusion. The same remark applies to the similar ap- 

 pendages of the Ruffed Grouse. The tail seems to present a curious 

 specialization, most marked in the outer feathers; its chief function in 

 life appears to be making a noise. The central pair of soft, long, silent 

 feathers stand out like monuments of what the tail used to be in the 

 palmy days of the species, when not mere hubbub in the madding crowd 

 on the noisy dance-bill, but dainty decoration was the charm by which 

 chiefly the pedioctetes wooed and won his mate. 



* The same remark applies to the partridge. 



