NORTHERN OCEAN 379 



bill, with scarlet eye-brows, very large and beautiful in the 

 male, but less conspicuous in the female. In Summer they 

 are brown, elegantly barred and mottled wi:h orange, white, 

 and black ; and at that season the males are very proud and 

 handsome, but the females are less beautiful, being of one 

 universal brown. As the Fall advances they change to a 

 delicate white, except fourteen black feathers in the tail, v/hich 

 are also tipped with white ; and their legs and feet, quite 

 down to the nails, are warmly covered with feathers. In the 

 latter end of September and beginning of October they gather 

 in flocks of some hundreds, and proceed from the open plains 

 and barren grounds, (where they usually breed,) to the woods 

 and brush-willows, where they hord together in a state of 

 society, till dispersed by their common enemies, the hawks, or 

 hunters. They are by far the most numerous of any of the 

 Grouse species that are found in Hudson's Bay; and in some 

 places when permitted to remain undisturbed for a consider- 

 able time, their number is frequently so great, as almost to 

 exceed credibility. I shall by no means exceed truth, if I 

 assert that I have seen upward of four hundred in one flock 

 near Churchill River ; but the greatest number I ever saw was 

 on the North side of Port Nelson River, when returning with 

 a packet in March one thousand seven hundred and sixty- 

 eight : at that time I saw thousands flying to the North, and 

 the whole surface of the snow seemed to be in motion by 

 those that were feeding on the tops of the short willows. Sir 

 [412] Thomas Button mentions, that when he wintered in 

 Port Nelson River in one thousand six hundred and twelve, 

 his crew killed eighteen hundred dozen of those birds, which 

 I have no reason to doubt ; and Mr. Jeremie, formerly 

 Governor at York Fort, when that place was in the possession 

 of the French, and then called Fort Bourbon, asserts, that he 

 and seventy-nine others eat no less than ninety thousand par- 

 tridges and twenty-five thousand hares in the course of one 



