NECESSITY FOR GAME LAWS. 191 



brace daily, with means of using them, to the most 

 tremendous bags, if they are to be thrown away. Not 

 many years since, when travelling through a remote 

 and unfrequented section of the State of Illinois, I 

 came across a party of young men who were daily 

 destroying from twenty to thirty couple per gun, and 

 as the season was warm, and the connection with the 

 railroad difficult and uncertain, when asked by the 

 tavern-keeper what they intended doing with their 

 game, they laughingly responded, " Throw it in the 

 hog-pen," and for upwards of a week they continued 

 this dastardly behaviour. Can it then be wondered 

 that game rapidly diminishes, when persons are to be 

 found capable of such disgraceful conduct. The only 

 check that I can see, is the organisation of proper 

 game-laws, and putting their enforcement in the hands 

 of honest, reliable men, who will see them carried out 

 to the very letter, the violation of which should be 

 punishable by heavy fines, the greater part to go to 

 the informer. 



Pinnated grouse are very capricious in choice of 

 sites on which to place their nests; solitude and 

 vicinity to favourite food or other causes, of which an 

 outsider can know but little, must be accepted as the 

 probable reasons. However, I have generally observed 

 that a preference is shown for those places where the 

 prairie is covered with bunch-grass, particularly if the 

 subsurface is moist, and the neighbourhood not over- 

 stocked with cattle. This bird is easily caused to 

 desert her nest, whether the intrusion be committed by 

 man or beast; on such occasions a new nursery is 

 chosen and a second lot of eggs laid, but if misfortune 

 should deprive her of her brood after the young have 



