552 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



their natural range, whenever the alfalfa is green, these 

 birds resort to it, and for a part of the year it seems to 

 constitute one of their chief foods. 



The hen prairie chicken laid ten eggs and then died, 

 showing intense infection with coccidia, which appears 

 to be the bane of so many of our native birds, including 

 the domestic turkey. Five of the eggs were hatched 

 under a bantam hen, but all died in Professor Hodge's 

 absence from home. He was promised eggs or breed- 

 ing stock in prairie chickens for the following year, 

 and hoped to experiment with them. 



In 1909, however, circumstances prevented his work 

 on the problem. He reared three ruffed grouse and 

 fourteen quail, and in 1910, owing to the pressure of 

 affairs he turned over his breeding stock to the Massa- 

 chusetts Commission. 



While Professor Hodge was doing this work at 

 Worcester, the superintendent of the Sutton Hatchery, 

 the Massachusetts Game Farm, was studying the same 

 problems. The results obtained were not great in the 

 number of birds, but much was learned as to the most 

 serious disease likely to be met with, and the adapt- 

 ability of quail and grouse to domestication. It was 

 found that disease rather than the method of feeding 

 is the controlling factor in rearing the young. One 

 hundred and twenty-two ruffed grouse were hatched, 

 but all except 2 birds were lost, though n lived to 

 the age of seven weeks. Many of the deaths were due 

 to coccidium, and others to what is called by the writer 

 "brooder pneumonia," and the inference drawn from 



