rSSs.J Brewster on the Heath He?i of Massachusetts. 8 I 



colored Prairie Hen of the open grassy plains and prairies of the 

 West originally had a smaller, darker, and redder eastern repre- 

 sentative distributed, perhaps rather locally, in scrubby pine and 

 oak tracts, throughout Southern New England and portions of 

 the Middle States. At that time it is not unlikely that the two 

 forms intergraded over such intermediate ground as Western 

 Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio and Kentucky. However this 

 may have been, they cannot do so now — unless fortuitously, as 

 by reversion — for the last remnant of the eastern stock still 

 lingering on Martha's Vineyard is separated from the extreme 

 eastern confines of the present range of the western bird by an 

 interval of about eight hundred miles. 



As these eastern Grouse are distinguishable from their western 

 cousins by well-marked and apparently constant characters,* and 

 as the two birds are now so widely separated geographically that 

 they cannot intermingle, it follows that they may be consistently 

 recognized as distinct if closeby related species, for the probability 

 that their separation has been ' brought about by man's in- 

 tervention, and within historic times, can have no real bearing 

 on the case. Unfortunately the Prairie Hen must receive 

 the new name, for there is little doubt that the Tetrao 

 cupido of Linnagus was really the eastern form. This is 

 indicated by the fact that its habitat is given as "in Virginia"! ; 

 moreover, there are good reasons for believing that Linnaeus 

 based his diagnosis (which is too brief and general to give much 

 more than generic characters) on Catesby, whose work he cites. 

 If this assumption be granted, the case is freed from all obscur- 

 ity, for Catesby's figure, although an absurd caricature, was 

 evidently drawn from the eastern bird, while his discription 

 mentions several of the characters which separate the latter from 

 the Prairie Hen. Both plate and description were taken from some 

 live specimens which Catesby saw in 1742 "at the right honour- 

 able the Earl of Wilmi 'ngton's at Chiswick. who told me they 

 were natives of America, but from what particular part they 

 came his Lordship knew not." Other considerations aside, it is 



* I have examined in this connection upwards of a hundred western specimens in 

 the Boston markets. 



t Doubtless a loose statement, as I cannot find that it ever occurred south of Penn- 

 sylvania. 



