PINNATED GROUSE 213 



wherever the food is, there is the likeliest place for 

 the game. In addition to this rule as a guide, we look 

 for their fresh tracks among the sandy barberry hil- 

 locks and along the numerous patches which intersect 

 that remarkable part of the Vineyard called Tisbury 

 Plain. Into this, should the birds fly from the hedges, 

 as they sometimes do, it is almost impossible to start 

 them a second time, as there are no trees or large 

 objects to mark their flight. Being mostly covered with 

 scrub oak of a uniform height, with occasional mossy 

 hollows, it affords them a place of refuge, into which 

 they fly for protection, but from which they soon 

 emerge, when the danger is passed, to their more 

 favourite haunts." 



This letter was written in December, 1832. 



The ornithologists of the first half of the nineteenth 

 century did not differentiate the pinnated grouse of the 

 Mississippi Valley from the eastern bird, and spoke 

 of the pinnated grouse as even then almost extermi- 

 nated from its old range on the Atlantic coast. A con- 

 temporary statement of interest as to the heath hen is 

 that made by Elisha J. Lewis in "The American Sports- 

 man," published in Pennsylvania, 1857. He says: 



"The prairie hen was, no doubt, at one time widely 

 disseminated over our whole country, more particularly 

 in those 'portions interspersed with dry, open plains sur- 

 rounded by thin shrubbery or scantily covered with 

 trees. Unlike the ruffed grouse, this bird delights in 

 the clear, open prairie grounds, and will desert those 

 districts entirely which in the lapse of time become 



