THE PINNATED GROUSE. 385 



immense, intermediate regions that he never visits. Open, dry 

 plains, thinly interspersed with trees, or partially overgrown with 

 shrub , oak, are his favorite haunts. Accordingly, we find these 

 birds on the Grouse plains of New Jersey, in Burlington County, 

 as well as on the brushy plains of Long Island ; among the pines 

 and shrub oaks of Pocano, in Northampton County, Pennsylvania ; 

 over the whole extent of the Barrens of Kentucky ; on the luxuri- 

 ant plains and prairies of the Indiana Territory, and Upper Louisi- 

 ana ; and, according to the information of the late Governor Lewis, 

 on the vast and remote plains of the Columbia River ; in all these 

 places preserving the same singular habits. 



" Their predilection for such situations will be best accounted for 

 by considering the following facts and circumstances : First, their 

 mode of flight is generally direct and laborious, and ill calculated 

 for the labyrinth of a high and thick forest, crowded and intersected 

 with trunks and arms of trees, that require continual angular evolu- 

 tion of wing, or sudden turnings, to which they are by no means 

 accustomed. I have always observed them to avoid the high- 

 timbered groves that occur here and there in the Barrens. Con- 

 nected with this fact is a circumstance related to me by a very 

 respectable inhabitant of that country ; viz., that, one forenoon, a 

 cock Grouse struck the stone chimney of his house with such force 

 as instantly to fall dead to the ground. 



" Secondly, their known dislike of ponds, marshes, or watery 

 places, which they avoid on all occasions ; drinking but seldom, and, 

 it is believed, never from such places. Even in confinement, this 

 peculiarity has been taken notice of. While I was in the State of 

 Tennessee, a person living within a few miles of Nashville had 

 caught an old hen Grouse in a trap ; and, being obliged to keep her 

 in a large cage, as she struck and abused the rest of the poultry, 

 he remarked that she never drank, and that she even avoided that 

 quarter of the cage where the cup containing the water was placed. 

 Happening, one day, to let some water fall on the cage, it 'trickled 

 down in drops along the bars, which the bird no sooner observed 

 than she eagerly picked them off", drop by drop, with a dexterity 

 that showed she had been habituated to this mode of quenching her 

 thirst, and probably to this mode only, in those dry and barren 

 tracts, where, except the drops of dew and drops of ram, water is 



25 



