THE SAGE COCK. 63 



followed by a hollow blowing sound. He has the partridge's 

 habit of drumming with his wings, while the hen-bird knows 

 the trick of misleading the enemy from her young brood. 

 He seldom rises from the ground, his occasional flights being 

 low, short, and laboured. He runs with great speed, and 

 in his favourite habitat dodges and skulks with rapidity, 

 favoured by the resemblance of his colour to the natural tints 

 of the scrub. Though sometimes called the Cock of the Plains, 

 he never descends into the plains, being always found on the 

 higher mountain regions. 



When the snow begins to melt, the sage hen builds in the 

 bush a nest of sticks and reeds artistically matted together, 

 and lays from a dozen to twenty eggs, rather larger than 

 those of the domestic fowl, of a tawny colour, irregularly 

 marked with chocolate blotches on the larger end. When a 

 brood is strong enough to travel, the parents lead their young 

 into general society. They are excessively tame, or bold. 

 Often they may be seen strutting between the gnarled trunk 

 and ashen masses of foliage peculiar to the sage scrub, and 

 paying no more attention to the traveller than would a barn- 

 yard drove of turkeys ; the cocks now and then stopping to 

 play the dandy before their more Quakerly little hens, in- 

 flating the little yellow pouches of skin on either side of their 

 necks, till they globe out like the pouches of a pigeon. 



WINTER SCENE AMONG THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 



Descending the precipitous slopes of the Rocky Mountains 

 on the west, we enter on a vast plain no less than 2000 

 miles in length, though comparatively narrow the great 

 basin of California and Oregon. Its greatest width, from the 

 Sierra Nevada to the Rocky Mountains, is nearly 600 miles, 



