BULLETIN NUMBER FIVE 205 



fields for its pitiful ounces of flesh? Perhaps they will be 

 diligent in locking the stable door after the horse has 

 vanished. 



To my friend, the Quail-shooter and Epicure: 



The next time you regale a good appetite with blue points, 

 terrapin stew, filet of sole and saddle of mutton, touched 

 up here and there with the high lights of rare old sherry, 

 rich claret and dry monopole, pause as the dead quail is 

 laid before you, on a funeral pyre of toast, and consider 

 this : "Here lies the charred remains of the Farmer's Ally 

 and Friend, poor Bob-White. In life he devoured 145 dif- 

 ferent kinds of bad insects, and the seeds of 129 anathema 

 weeds. For the smaller pests of the farm, he was the most 

 marvelous engine of destruction that God ever put together 

 of flesh and blood. He was good, beautiful and true; and 

 his small life was blameless. And here he lies, dead; 

 snatched away from his field of labor, and destroyed, in 

 order that I may be tempted to dine three minutes longer, 

 after I have already eaten to satiety." 



Then go on, and finish Bob-White. 



THE LESSON OF THE HEATH HEN. 



The people of all the states and Canadian provinces still 

 containing remnants of grouse of any kind or kinds, ptar- 

 migan or quail, are warned to learn now the tragic lesson 

 of the Heath Hen or Eastern Pinnated Grouse (Tympanu- 

 chus ciipido), — the species originally described by Linnaeus 

 in 1766. 



Originally it inhabited the open plains of New York, — 

 especially Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode 

 Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Being 

 a bird of the open country, and averse to the forest life, it 

 was easily found and killed, even with the primitive weap- 

 ons of the eighteenth century. 



