192 



cassell's book of birds. 



"^^^len I first removed to Kentucky," says Audubon, "the Pinnated Grouse were so abundant 

 that they were held in no higher estimation as food than the most common flesh, and no hunter. 

 of Kentucky deigned to shoot them. They were, in fact, looked upon with more abhorrence than 

 the Crows are at present in Massachusetts and Maine, on account of the mischief they committed 

 among the fruit-trees of the orchards during winter when they fed on their buds, whilst in the 

 spring months they picked up the grain in the fields. Children were employed to drive them away 

 with rattles from morning till night, and also caught them in pens and traps of various kinds. In 

 those days during the winter, the Grouse would enter the farm-yard and feed with the poultry, alight 





THE PRAIRIE HEN (Ciipidonia Amerkatia). 



on the houses, or walk in the very streets of the villages. I recollect having caught several in a 

 stable at Henderson, where they followed some Wild Turkeys. In the course of the same winter 

 a friend of mine, who was fond of rifle-shooting, killed upwards of forty in one morning, but picked 

 none of them up ; so satiated with Grouse was he as well as every member of his family. My own 

 servants preferred the fattest flitch of bacon to their flesh, and not unfrequently laid them aside as 

 unfit for cooking." 



Such an account appears still more strange when we learn that in the same country where sixty 

 years ago they could not have been sold for more than a cent a-piece, scarcely one is now to be 

 found. The Grouse have abandoned the State of Kentucky, and removed (like the Indians) every 

 season further westward to escape from the murderous white man. In the Eastern States where 

 some of them still exist, game-laws have been made for their protection. The Pinnated Grouse 

 selects for its abode wide prairies and treeless land covered only with grass or scattered bushes, 

 and has hence received the name of the Prairie Hen ; it does not, however, avoid cultivated land, 



