BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 167 
perhaps in another direction, and on the third the hunters 
return home with their spoils, to distribute them among friends 
not so fortunate as to own a gun and a dog, when the double 
barrel is cleaned and put away, and business resumed.” 
I have introduced this detailed and circumstantial extract 
from Mr. Washburn’s communication as one of the most faith- 
ful descriptions of a Prairie Chicken hunt that I have ever 
read, and as representing in all probability not less than two 
or three hundred other similar and simultaneous parties of 
hen-killers, conveniently entitled ‘‘sportsmen,” found for 
several weeks within the dominion of our young State. No 
member of the bird family has ever received more universal 
recognition than this denizen of the broad prairies. From 
royalty to rags all classes have honored it with a place in the 
memory if not in the ‘‘bag,” or the stomach, as proof of which 
we have only to point silently to the motley array of the won- 
drously improved double-barrelled shot-guns, ammunition, 
pointers, setters, elegant trains of sportsmen’s railroad coaches 
side-tracked for days at a time in the vicinity of the bird’s well 
known haunts far within our borders. Nothing short of a 
national jubilee and half-fares, so moves the masses and the 
classes as the dawning of the morn of the ‘‘open season” for 
shooting Prairie Chickens. Within the period of its history, 
the species has borne many ‘‘common” names, among which 
Heath Hen, Prairie Grouse, Prairie Chicken, Boomers, Pinnated 
Grouse, etc., and it is now refreshing and restful to learn that 
the decrees of exact science have finally settled upon ‘‘Hen.” 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Tail of eighteen feathers; general color varied, but domi- 
nantly whitish-brown and brownish yellow, almost everywhere 
with well defined transverse bars of brown on the feathers. 
' Body stout, compact; a tuft of long, pointed feathers on each 
side of the neck, covering a bare space capable of inflation; 
tail short, truncated, much graduated; lateral feathers about 
two-thirds the middle; the feathers stiffened, nearly linear and 
truncate, scarcely longer than the coverts, and about half the 
length of the wing. Tarsi covered with feathers anteriorly 
and laterally to the toes, but bare with hexagonal scutelle 
behind; middle toe and claw longer than tarsus; toes margined 
by pectinated processes. A space above the eye provided 
with a dense, pectinated process in the breeding season, some 
times separated from the eye by a superciliary space covered 
with feathers. Bands on body transverse throughout; lan- 
ceolate feathers of the throat black; upper ones with a central 
yellowish stripe; eyelids, and a stripe from the nostril along 
—122 
