66 DUVAR ON ADDITIONS TO GAME IN NOVA SCOTIA. 



domesticatiou, they will not likely be ever found to multiply in 

 Nova Scotia except as denizens of the aviary, or among the fancies 

 of the poultry yard. Here let me contradict sin error that is still 

 going the rounds of English sporting works. In the "Field Book 

 of the Sports and Pastimes of the British Islands," by the author 

 of "Wild Sports of the West," (a recent edition,) it is stated, 

 under the head of "American game," "The American grouse is 

 precisely like the Scotch grouse. There is only here and there a 

 place where they are found; but they are in thos& places killed in 

 vast quantities in the fall of the year."* Every body on this side 

 the water knows that the American grouse — or partridge so called 

 — are the birchf (Tetrao umbellus) or ruffed grouse, and the spruce 

 spotted, or Canada grouse, both different from the red grouse of the 

 British Isles.J 



As regards the family of pheasants, much may be said in their 

 favour. The English pheasant {phasianus colchicus) has escaped from 

 confinement and survived the winter in Nova Scotia. Golden and 

 silver pheasants, now kept for luxury, have proved themselves 

 capable of enduring the severest frosts. Indeed there are many 

 varieties of pheasants, which, with the spread of agriculture in the 

 future, may become the game of the country, and supersede, in the 

 hedgerows and coppices, the now wilder winged ones of the woods- 

 One more splendid variety of game must be mentioned, which 

 would multiply and flourish exceedingly, but the hope to see it in 

 our woods is too Utopian for this century. This bird is no other 

 than the turkey ; the half-bred bronzed being probably the best. 

 We read that a flock of 2,000 were kept in Richmond Park in the 

 time of George II., for the especial shooting of that monarch, but 

 as the public surreptitiously joined in the sport, they were 

 destroyed. The only drawback to their being naturalized as wild 

 game in this Province is, that while one could be found, none of 

 our backwoodsmen would want for a dinner. 

 Proceeding to the finny tribe : — 



From the greater capacity of fish for bearing extreme variations 

 of temperature, and from their adapting themselves so easily to 



•See Field Book, Ac, page 9 : London, 

 tit is the birch partridge (male only) that "drums." 



^ The willow grouse of Newfoundland, and the prairie hen, or pinnated grouse, 

 have also been suggested to me, but I cannot speak of them from personal knowledge. 



