148 lewis' amekican sportsman. 



beautiful Birds were butchered long before the time sanctioned 

 by the strong or rather the weak arm of the law. 



Thus it is that the destructive hand of the would-be respect- 

 able Poacher, as well as the greedy gun of the Pot-hunter, 

 hastens to seal the fate of the doomed Prairie Hen in these 

 Eastern regions, and we may predict with great certainty that 

 ere long not one will be found save upon the rich plains of the 

 West ; from which, also, in course of time, they will be driven, 

 and ultimately perish, root and branch, from before the unerring 

 guns of their ruthless destroyers. We understand that there 

 are still a few of these Birds to be found in Pennsylvania, we 

 believe in Northampton County, where the pine forests are thin 

 and open, and the country about them such as Prairie Hens 

 delight in. They have always been abundant in the barrens 

 of Kentucky and Tennessee, as also in the balmy plains and 

 fertile Prairies of Louisiana, Indiana, and Illinois. So numerous 

 were they a short time since in the barrens of Kentucky, and 

 so contemptible were they as Game Birds, that few Huntsmen 

 would deign to waste powder and shot on them. In fact, they 

 were held in pretty much the same estimation, or rather abhor- 

 rence, that the Crows are now in Pennsylvania or other of the 

 Middle and Southern States, as they perpetrated quite as much 

 mischief upon the tender buds and fruits of the orchards, as 

 well as the grain in the fields, and were often so destructive to 

 the crops that it was absolutely necessary for the farmers to 

 employ their young negroes to drive them away by shooting 

 off guns and springing loud rattles all around the plantations 

 from morning till night. As for eating them, such a thing Avas 

 hardly dreamed of, the negroes themselves preferring the 

 coarsest food to this now much-admired Bird; while the young 

 Sportsman exercised his skill in Rifle-shooting upon them, in 

 anticipation of more exciting sport among the other prized 

 denizens of the plain and forest. Prairie Hens have not only 

 deserted Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, Elizabeth Island, New 

 Jersey, and their other haunts to the eastward, but they have 

 also removed even further west than the barrens of Kentucky, 

 and are no longer to be found abundant save in Illinois, and on 

 the extensive plains of the Missouri, Arkansas, and Columbia 

 Rivers. 



