380 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



when it can get no other food. In fact, at all seasons, it is 

 far inferior to all our other game birds in flesh, and is never 

 delicate nor palatable. 



About the middle of May, the female scratches together 

 a loose nest, beneath the branches of a creeping fir, and 

 lays in it from eight to twelve eggs. These are of a beau- 

 tiful yellowish-buff color, with spots and blotches of two 

 shades of brown : one a purplish-brown ; the other, a burnt- 

 sienna. They average in dimensions about 1.68 by 1.26 

 inch : their form is generally ovoidal ; sometimes nearly 

 oval, and occasionally more rounded. It is said, that, 

 " when incubation begins, the males go apart by themselves 

 to different portions of the forest, and remain until late in 

 autumn, when they rejoin the females and young." 



This species flourishes well in confinement: it tames 

 readily, and soon eats all kinds of grains and seeds, and 

 pieces of potatoes and fruits. It requires a large cage or 

 coop, and is contented if it has, now and then, a spruce or 

 cedar-tree given it to roost and climb upon. 



CUPIDONIA, REICHENBACH. 



Cupidonia, REICHENBACH, Av. Syst. Nat. (1850). (Type Tetrao Cupido, L.) 

 Tail short, half the lengthened wings ; the feathers stiffened and more or less 

 graduated; bare space of the neck concealed by a tuft of lanceolate feathers; tarsi 

 feathered only to near the base, the lower joint scutellate; culmen between the nasal 

 fossae scarcely one-tflird the total length. 



CUPIDONIA CUPIDO. Baird. 

 The Pinnated Grouse; Prairie Hen; Prairie Chicken. 



Tetrao Cupido, Linnaeus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 274. Wils. Am. Orn., III. (1811) 

 104. Nutt. Man., I. 662. Aud. Orn. Biog., II. (1834) 490; V. (1839) 559. 

 Cupidonia Americana, Reichenbach. Av. Syst. Nat. (1850). 



DESCRIPTION. 



Tail of eighteen feathers, varied with whitish-brown and brownish-yellow ; almost 

 everywhere with well-defined transverse bars of brown on the feathers. 



Body stout, compact; a tuft of long, pointed lanceolate feathers on each side of 

 the neck, covering a bare space capable of much inflation; tail short, truncate, much 

 graduated, composed of eighteen feathers, the lateral feathers about two-thirds the 



