THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN, OR SHARPT AILED GROUSE. 411 



There is another heading under which to discuss the Prairie 

 Chicken, viz., its fitness for domestication. An apparently necessary 

 and most profitable adjunct of every farm is a stock of poultry. 

 But my experience with four varieties of poultry goes to shew that 

 the winter here is far too severe ; late chickens are sure to die, while 

 old ones are almost sure to be badly frost-bitten about the head the 

 first winter, and even lose their unprotected toes and legs in the 

 same way. Their feathers, for want of the regular dust bath, etc., 

 become very deplorable and stick so in points and lumps that they 

 lose half their non-conducting power. From this it is evident that 

 the farmer wants a fowl that is without such unnecessary and deli- 

 cate appendages as combs and wattles, has its legs and feet well 

 protected from the frost, is able to stand any amount of cold, having 

 feathers of duck-like density. The abundance of hawks renders it 

 also desirable that the bird be inconspicuous, not bright colored or 

 white like the common fowls. All this seems to point very clearly 

 to the Prairie Chicken. In addition to these it has the great 

 advantage of maturing early ; in ten weeks a Prairie Chicken is 

 full grown, while a common fowl takes thrice as long. The grouse 

 weighs only about three pounds, yet it yields more solid meat than a 

 five-pound chicken, and it can fatten on what the chicken will scarcely 

 look at, having also the advantage of being able to take at one meal 

 enough to last it all day, if necessary, such is the size of its crop. 

 Its flesh is of a most delicate flavor, no barn-door fowl being at all 

 to be compared with it, though this might be one of the fii-st things 

 to be lost in a state of domestication. 



I cannot say I know it to be capable of domestication ; indeed I 

 know one man who kept one six months, and at the end it was as 

 wild as at first, but this was caught when full grown. Yet Audubon 

 tamed the Pinnated grouse with little trouble, as did Wilson the 

 quail. And I have little doubt that in a generation or two this 

 would become manageable. The number of eggs laid would, doubtless, 

 increase if eggs were cautiously removed, though, I confess, I found 

 them rather jealous, for, on taking six eggs out of a nest of fourteen, 

 the rest were deserted. These six eggs were hatched by a hen, but 

 earlier than her own eggs, and I found the young grouse all 

 crushed. Wilson says, all attempts to raise the young have failed 

 probably for want of proper food. Perhaps he is right. The situa- 



