60 FRANK FORESTER S FIELD SPORTS. 



peculiarities ; for alas, there was neither voice or action, nor de- 

 licacy of flavor in the shrunk and decayed skin from which the 

 former took his figure and the latter his description ; and to this 

 circumstance must be attributed the barrenness and defects of 

 both. This rare bird, though an inhabitant of different and 

 very distant districts of North America, is extremely particular 

 in selecting his place of residence, pitching only upon those 

 tracts whose features and productions correspond with his mode 

 of life, and avoiding immense intermediate regions that he 

 never visits. Open, dry places, thinly interspersed with trees, or 

 partially overgrown with shrub-oak, are his favorite haunts. 

 Accordingly, we find these birds on the GROusE-plains of New 

 Jersey, in Burlington County, as well as on the brushy plains of 

 Long Island ; among the trees and shrub-oaks of Pocano, in 

 Northampton County, in Pennsylvania ; over the whole extent of 

 the barrens of Kentucky, on the luxuriant plains and prairies of 

 the Indiana and Upper Louisiana, and according to the informa- 

 tion of the late Governor Lewis, on the vast remote plains of 

 the Columbia River, in all these places preserving the same 

 singular habits. Their predilection for such situations will be 

 best accounted for by considering the following facts and circum- 

 stances : — First, their mode of flight is generally direct and labo- 

 rious — ill calculated for the labyrinth of a high and thick forest, 

 crowded and intersected with trunks and arms of trees that require 

 continual angular evolution of wing or sudden turnings, to which 

 they are by no means accustomed. I have always observed 

 them to avoid the high-timbered groves that occur here and there 

 in the Barrens. Connected with this, fact is a circumstance 

 related to me by a very respectable inhabitant of that county — 

 viz.,tliat one forenoon a Cock-GRousE struck the stone chimney 

 of his house with such force, as instantly to fall dead to the 

 ground. Secondly, their known dislike of ponds, marshes, or 

 watery places, which they avoid, drinking but seldom, and it is 

 believed never from such places. Even in confinement this 

 peculiarity has been taken notice of. While I was in the State 

 of Tennessee, a person, living within a few miles of Nashville, 



