PINNATED GROUS. 35 



cup and water still remained untouched and untasted. Yet no 

 sooner did he again sprinkle water on the bars of the cage, than 

 she eagerly and rapidly picked them off as before. 



The last, and probably the strongest inducement to their 

 preferring these plains, is the small acorn of the shrub-oak; the 

 strawberries, buckle berries, and partridge berries with which 

 they abound, and which constitute the principal part of the 

 food of these birds. These brushy thickets also afford them ex- 

 cellent shelter, being almost impenetrable to dogs or birds of 

 prey. 



In all these places where they inhabit they are, in the strictest 

 sense of the word, resident; having their particular haunts, and 

 places of rendezvous, (as described in the preceding account,) 

 to which they are strongly attached. Yet they have been known 

 to abandon an entire tract of such country, when, from what- 

 ever cause it might proceed, it became again covered with 

 forest. A few miles south of the town of York, in Pennsylva- 

 nia, commences an extent of country, formerly of the character 

 described, now chiefly covered with wood; but still retaining 

 the name of Barrens. In the recollection of an old man born 

 in that part of the country, this tract abounded with Grous. 



The timber growing up, in progress of years, these birds 

 totally disappeared; and for a long period of time he had seen 

 none of them; until migrating with his family to Kentucky, on 

 entering the barrens he one morning recognized the well known 

 music of his old acquaintance the Grous; which he assures me 

 are the very same with those he had known in Pennsylvania. 



But what appears to me the most remarkable circumstance 

 relative to this bird is, that not one of all those writers who have 

 attempted its history has taken the least notice of those two 

 extraordinary bags of yellow skin which mark the neck of the 

 male, and which constitute so striking a peculiarity. These ap- 

 pear to be formed by an expansion of the gullet as well as of 

 the exterior skin of the neck, which, when the bird is at rest, 

 hangs in loose pendulous wrinkled folds, along the side of the 

 neck, the supplemental wings, at the same time, as well as when 



