14 FRANK FORESTER S FIELD SPORTS. 



even the Beaver, after they shall have become extinct, even in the 

 far West. 



It has been alleged, and by many is doubtless believed to be 

 true, that the increase of population, the spread of cultivation, 

 and the transfiguration of the woods and vs^astes into corn-lands 

 and pastures, are in themselves an all-sufficient and irremediable 

 cause for the disappearance of all the various kinds of game, the 

 extinction of which the sportsman and the naturalist alike 

 deplore. 



Were this the case, it would be needless to waste words on 

 the subject — but so far is it from being the case, that with regard 

 to very many kinds of game — several of those already 

 cited, and others, which, though still numerous, will ere long 

 be in the same predicament, so rapidly are they decreasing — the 

 very converse of the proposition is true. 



The Wild Turkey, the Pinnated Grouse, and its congener, the 

 Ruffed Grouse, as also the much rarer bird of the sam^e order, 

 commonly known as the Spruce Partridge — the very existence 

 of which was unknown to Wilson — all unquestionably do make 

 their homes in the wilderness, the last-named there exclusively. 

 But all the others, without exception, prefer the vicinity of cul- 

 tivated regions on account of the plenty and choicer quality of 

 the food ; and are found nowhere in such abundance as in those 

 localities, which afibrd the combination of rough wild lying- 

 ground, with highly cultivated land, on which to feed at morn 

 and dewy eve. 



Thus, in the Eastern States, if you are in pursuit of the Ruffed 

 Grouse, the surest places where to flush your game will not be 

 the depths of the cedar swamp, or the summit of the mountain 

 horrid with pine and hemlock, but on the slopes and ledges 

 falling down to the cultivated vales, and in the skirts of briary 

 woodlands, or in the red-cedar knolls, which remain yet unshorn 

 in the midst of maize and buckwheat fields, which never fail to 

 tempt this mountain-loving bird from his native fastnesses. 



In like manner, in the West, it is on the prairie, but in the 

 vicinity of the boundless tracts of maize and wheat, which the 

 industry of the white man has spread out over the hunting- 



