INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 15 



grounds of the Indian, that the Pinnated Grouse is to be found 

 in miUions ; and the Turkey in similar situations, where the 

 forest encircles the yet isolated clearings of the agricultural 

 pioneer. 



Thus, of these three species, it is untrue that the spread of 

 cultivation, unless in so far as that involves the increased 

 niiiubers and increased persecution of the cultivators, has any 

 detrimental effect on their propagation, or in anywise tends to 

 decrease their numbers. For centuries yet to come, let Ame- 

 rican industry develope and extend American agriculture as 

 rapidly as it may, there will be woodlands and wilds in abun- 

 dance to furnish shelter for any quantity of game ; and there 

 will always be fastnesses innumerable, which never will, be- 

 cause they never can, be cleared, owing to the roughness of 

 their surface, and the sterility of their soil, whether from eleva- 

 tion above the sea, rockiness or swampiness of situation, or 

 other natural causes, which it needs not to enumerate. 



Other species of game, so far from flyii:ig cultivation, or ab- 

 horring the vicinity of civilized man, are literally not to be found 

 except where the works of the ox and the man are conspicu- 

 ous ; never being seen at all in the wilderness proper, and 

 giving cause for some speculation as to their whereabouts, 

 their haunts, their habits, if not their existence on the conti- 

 nent, previous to the arrival of civilized man, from realms 

 nearer to the sun. 



Neither the Woodcock nor the Quail, Scolopax Minor, and 

 Perdix, sive Ortyx ViRniNiANA, are ever found in the depths 

 of the untamed forest, aloof from human habitations ; though 

 both genera frerjuent, nay require, woodland, as g, sine qua non, 

 for their habitation. Moreover, in places where they are entirely 

 unknown to the first settlers, where they do not in fact exist at 

 all, they speedily become abundant, so soon as the axe levels 

 the umbrageous forest, and the admitted sunbeams awaken or 

 mature the germs of that animal or vegetable life, on which the 

 birds subsist. 



This is, I presume, so generally known as a fact, that no proof 

 thereof is necessarv. I may, however, mention two or three 



