PINNATED GROUSE 217 



(locally pronounced heth'n, as this grouse is uni- 

 versally called) is well known to almost every one. 

 Even in such seaport towns as Cottage City and 

 Edgarstown, most of the people have at least heard 

 of it, and in the thinly settled interior it is frequently 

 seen in the roads or along the edges of the cover by 

 the farmers, or started in the depths of the woods 

 by the hounds of the rabbit and fox hunters. 



"Its range extends, practically, over the entire 

 wooded portion of the island, but the bird is not found 

 regularly or at all numerously outside an area of about 

 forty square miles. This area comprises most of the 

 elevated central portions of the island, although it also 

 touches the sea at not a few points on the north and 

 south shores. In places it rolls into great rounded 

 hills and long, irregular ridges, over which are scat- 

 tered stretches of second-growth woods, often miles 

 in extent, and composed chiefly of scarlet, black, white 

 and post oaks, from fifteen to forty feet in height. Here 

 and there, where the valleys spread out broad and 

 level, are fields which were cleared by the early set- 

 tlers more than a hundred years ago, and which still 

 retain sufficient fertility to yield very good crops of 

 English hay, corn, potatoes and other vegetables. 

 Again, this undulating surface gives way to wide, level, 

 sandy plains, covered with a growth of bear, chinqua- 

 pin and post-oak scrub, from knee to waist high, so 

 stiff and matted as to be almost impenetrable; or to 

 rocky pastures, dotted with thickets of sweet fern, bay- 



