THE PTARMIGAN. 215 



dread a human being, that they will often remain perched 

 upon a limb till a snare on the end of a rod can be passed 

 over their heads. This trustfulness of man's good inten- 

 tions toward them seriously militates against the amuse- 

 ment they would otherwise afford the sportsman. By the 

 residents of the localities this bird inhabits they are not 

 considered good food, for the reason that their back and 

 thighs strongly possess that peculiar game flavor for which 

 epicures value the Scotch bird. No. 6 or 7 shot will be 

 found the best suited for their destruction. 



SAGE GROUSE, or SAGE HEN, is a gross, heavy, awkward, 

 but handsomely plumaged bird ; it is almost unedible from 

 living upon the buds of the wild sage plant, and can only 

 be found where this shrub grows, viz., on the vast plains on 

 the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, for several de- 

 grees north and south of the thirty-eighth degree of lati- 

 tude. 



PTAEMIGAN. 



I remember asking a true representative of the Indian 

 brave, a member of the Sioux tribe, what he thought the 

 "happy hunting-ground" was like that he hoped to go to 

 when he left this world : his answer was, " One vast coun- 

 try without limits, divided into prairie, meadow, and tim- 

 ber land, where all the wild game teemed, and was so reck- 

 less of man's presence that the hunter had but to slay and 

 eat." How much more admirable would this description 

 be, if eating had been considered unnecessary, and that we 

 could return the confidence of the inferior animal life with 

 kindness not death I The Indian, doubtless, had his im- 

 agination controlled by the memory of some of the choicest 

 hunting-grounds within the limits of his tribe's extensive 

 range of country, for theirs is a game country par excel- 

 lence. But if my informant had been from some of the 

 tribes that lay far off to the north, where the snows lay 



