THE PTARMIGAN. 207 



tmedible from living upon the buds of the wild sage 

 plant, and can only be found where this shrub grows, 

 viz., on the vast plains on the eastern slopes of the 

 Rocky Mountains, for several degrees north and south 

 of the 38th degree of latitude. 



PTARMIGAN. 



I remember asking a true representative of the 

 Indian brave, a member of the Sioux tribe, what he 

 thought the " happy hunting ground " was like that he 

 hoped to go to when he left this world; his answer 

 was, " One vast country without limits, divided into 

 prairie, meadow, and timber land, where all the wild 

 game teemed, and was so reckless of man's presence 

 that the hunter had but to slay and eat." How 

 much more admirable would this description be, if 

 eating had been considered unnecessary, and that we 

 could return the confidence of the inferior animal life 

 with kindness not death ! The Indian, doubtless, 

 had his imagination controlled by the memory of some 

 of the choicest hunting grounds within the limits of his 

 tribe's extensive range of country, for theirs is a game 

 country par excellence. But if my informant had been 

 from some of the tribes that lay far off to the north, 

 where the snows lay deep half the year, and the spring 

 flits into summer, and the summer into winter, as 

 rapidly as the changing scenes of a drama, he would 

 possibly have described the happy hunting ground 

 similar to the great lone land, the home of the 

 ptarmigan. What eye hath not seen, the mind seldom 

 can conceive ; and I have no doubt the Aborigines of 

 these far-off, desolate regions, with their cutting north 



