56 BLACK COCK SHOOTING. 



variety {Scolopax mhior), rarely exceeding eight, and 

 never eleven, ounces ; he is red-breasted, and is in 

 the northern states a summer bird of passage ; com- 

 ing early in the spring, sometimes before the snow is 

 off the ground ; laying, rearing its young, and going 

 off, when the winter sets in, to the rice-fields and 

 warm wet swamps of Georgia and the Carolinas. 

 The bird called in the eastern states the partridge, 

 and everywhere southward and westward of New 

 Jersey, the pheasant, is in reality a grouse — the 

 ruffed or tipped grouse (Tetrao umhelliis) — a feather- 

 legged, pine-hmiting, mountain-loving bird, found in 

 every state, I believe, of the Union, in the Canadas, 

 and even up to Labrador. There are many other 

 grouse in North America, of which none are found 

 in the States, except the great abundance in Long 

 Island, New Jersey ; and the pinnated grouse, or 

 prairie-fowl, formerly found in north-eastern parts of 

 Pennsylvania, though on Long Island it is now quite 

 extinct, and nearly so in Pennsylvania and New 

 Jersey. They are still killed on Martha s Vineyard, 

 a little island off the coast of Massachusetts, where 

 they are now very vigorously preserved ; and in 

 Ohio, Illinois, and all the western states, they lite- 

 rally swarm on the prairies. The spruce grouse, a 

 small and very rare kind, is found in Maine occasion- 

 ally, and in a portion of New York, between the 

 head-waters of the Hudson and Canada frontier. 

 Four or five other species are found in Labrador 

 and on the Rocky Mountains ; but none of these, 



