PINNATED GROUS. 49a 



The Pinnated Grous is easily tamed, and easily kept. It also breeds 

 in confinement, and I have often felt surprised that it has not been fairly 

 domesticated. While at Henderson, I purchased sixty alive, that were 

 expressly caught for me within twelve miles of that village, and brought 

 in a bag laid across the back of a horse. I cut the tips of their wings, 

 and turned them loose in a garden and orchard about four acres in ex- 

 tent. Within a week they became tame enough to allow me to approach 

 them without their being frightened. I supplied them with abundance 

 of corn, and they fed besides on vegetables of various kinds. This was 

 in the month of September, and almost all of them were young birds. In 

 the course of the winter they became so gentle as to feed from the hand 

 of my wife, and walked about the garden like so many tame fowls, ming- 

 ling occasionally with the domestic poultry. I observed that at night 

 each individual made choice of one of the heaps in which a cabbage had 

 grown, and that they invariably placed their breast to the wind, whatever 

 way it happened to blow. When spring returned, they strutted, " tooted," 

 and fought, as if in the wilds where they had received their birth. Many 

 laid eggs, and a good number of young ones made their appearance, but 

 the Grous at last proved so destructive to the young vegetables, tearing 

 them up by the roots, that I ordered them to be killed. So brave were 

 some of the male birds, that they never flinched in the presence of a lar'ge 

 Turkey Cock, and now and then they would stand against a dunghill 

 cock, for a pass or two, before they would run from him. 



During very severe weather, I have known this species to roost at a 

 considerable height on trees, but they generally prefer resting on the 

 ground, I observed that for several nights in succession, many of these 

 Grous slept in a meadow not far distant from my house. This piece of 

 ground was thickly covered with tall grass, and one dark night I thought 

 of amusing myself by trying to catch them. I had a large seine, and 

 took with me several Negroes supplied with lanterns and long poles, with 

 the latter of which they bore the net completely off the ground. We en- 

 tered the meadow in the early part of the night, although it was so dark 

 that without a light one could hardly have seen an object a yard distant, 

 and spreading out the leaded end of the net, carried the other end for- 

 ward by means of the poles at the height of a few feet. I had marked 

 before dark a place in which a great number of the birds had alighted, 

 and now ordered my men to proceed towards it. As the net passed over 

 the first Grous in the way, the alarmed bird flew directly towards the 



