North American Grouse. 651 



to the Pacific, although the change of the climate there has produced 

 some changes of plumage, which cause its identity to be doubted. It 

 is a larger bird than the ruffed grouse, its flesh being dark, while 

 that is of a white or pink color. Its plumage is light brown, nearly 

 uniformly barred on the breast, and spotted on the back with a 

 darker brown. Formerly it existed on the plains of Long Island, 

 New Jersey, and Maryland, but ceaseless hunting has destroyed it in 

 all States east of Indiana. 



It makes a nest of grass in the open prairie, laying ten or twelve 

 eggs of a light color, spotted with irregular brown spots, and hatches 

 in June ; and generally the young are seven-eighths grown by the 

 fifteenth of August, when the laws of most of the Western States 

 permit the shooting of them. In Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin it 

 is not unusual for a sportsman to kill sixty in a day, at the opening 

 of the season. In winter, when the snows compel them to come near 

 the woods and the wheat-stacks for food, they are trapped in great 

 numbers, packed in barrels, and sent to the cities of the Eastern 

 States, and even to London. It is not unusual for shippers to send 

 a hundred barrels of this game in a single consignment to New-York. 

 It is this wholesale trapping and exportation which is exterminating 

 the species. When the bird is young, it remains in its original covey, 

 and when disturbed, scatters in the tall prairie-grass, and can then 

 be flushed over the dog, one at a time, so that the sportsman is thus 

 often able to secure the whole covey. Later, several coveys unite in 

 a pack, and by frosty weather several small packs unite, forming a 

 pack of fifty to a hundred birds. Then they keep on the wide range 

 of the open prairie, and become wary and watchful, and cannot be 

 approached. The hunter must be content to take an occasional 

 long shot as the pack is flying over him from one point to another. 

 In these flights the fowl sometimes continue in the air ten miles, and 





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