216 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



where a few broods still linger. Within our 

 recollection, however, they have entirely disap- 

 peared from sections of the country, where they 

 were once often met with. They afford more 

 sport in September, when the young birds are 

 fully grown, and in this month we have occa- 

 sionally found them in fresh buckwheat stub- 

 bles, and in plantations of young trees, in close 

 proximity to the woody and precipitous bank of 

 a stream. On the farm of an eccentric old 

 bachelor, dubbed by his neighbors in the upper 

 part of Montgomery, King John, these birds 

 once bred in undisturbed security. The old 

 fellow was peculiar in his habits, and had not 

 slept from under the roof of his homestead, for 

 fifty years. He suffered a large part of his farm 

 to lie untilled, and never allowed a gun to be 

 fired on his premises, except the venerable fowl- 

 ing piece, which, in imitation of ancient usages, 

 he regularly discharged from his kitchen door 

 at sundown, to let the wicked world within 

 hearing know, that, as usual, he was at home. 

 His house stood upon a hill, one side of which 

 was precipitous, and covered with cedars, oaks 

 and laurels; on this side, a steep and broken 

 path, known as the Devil's staircase, led down 

 to a mill-dam, on which we have occasionally 



