194 PRAIEIE AND FOREST. 



warm, summer like day, the birds will become so disinclined 

 for exertion, between the hours of 10 A.M. and 3 P.M., that 

 marvellous bags can be made. 



As food, this bird can favourably compare with any of 

 the grouse family, but is dissimilar in one respect from all 

 the others, that the sooner it is cooked after being killed, 

 the more delicate and savoury it will be found. Even the 

 skill of Delmonico, of New York, the justly-celebrated 

 restaurant proprietor, with all his knowledge of cuisine, 

 cannot impart the delicate flavour that the same bird would 

 have from the hands of the most ignorant cook, provided it 

 were served a few hours after being killed. 



This grouse can easily be domesticated. Mr. Audubon, 

 the naturalist, for some time kept quite a number in a 

 walled garden, where* they became as tame as domestic 

 fowls; from this circumstance I do not believe there would 

 be any difficulty in transporting them across the Atlantic. 

 To gentlemen stocking preserves, or desirous of being able 

 to show a great variety of game upon their estate, this 

 magnificent member of the grouse genus ought to receive 

 attention. 



The best prairie-chicken shooting I have ever had was in 

 the month of October ; and although September had been 

 both wet and boisterous, yet the birds had not packed, and 

 lay well. Day after day I killed from twenty brace upwards, 

 and this in the northern portion of Illinois, with a fourteen- 

 bore, light-made, twenty-six-inch-barrelled gun. I have 

 little hesitation in saying that, if I had had a ten-bore, 

 which I now always use for general shooting in America, 

 my score would have been at least double. As it was I 



