130 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
irides are brown or hazel, and the tail, which has an 
extreme length of seven and a half inches, has a band of 
deep-blue or lead color, about three-fifths of an inch in 
width. The male is sooty black above, the mottlings 
being scarcely visible, and the scapularies are devoid of 
white markings. The black of the female is broken 
above by transverse rufous mottlings; the abdomen is 
dusky or leaden in hue; and the plumbaceous color of 
the throat and flanks is marked by triangular and arrow- 
shaped dots of rusty white. 
The variety known as Richardson’s grouse is devoid of 
the broad terminal band of gray on the tail which the 
typical species displays; the tail is also more square 
at the tip, uniformly black, and the feathers composing 
it are broader and nearly truncate. It is not unlike the 
European black cock, yet they may be readily distin- 
guished apart. This variety and the true dusky grouse 
merge into each other so closely in the central Rocky 
Mountains that few persons can distinguish them apart 
until they have been carefully compared, and even then 
it is sometimes rather difficult to decide which is which. 
Men who are more interested in sport than in technical 
details pay little attention to these differences, however, 
and are willing to let naturalists contend over them 
while they devour the birds. Although it may be said 
that the whole of the lower mountains, extending from 
the Rocky Mountains to the Cascade and Sierra Nevada 
Ranges, swarm with the dusky grouse during the sum- 
mer and autumn, yet I have not seen them so abundant 
in any part of the continent as on the Blue Mountains, 
which run through Oregon and Washington Territory; 
the Bitter Root Mountains, which divide Idaho and 
Montana; and the series of elevated wooden ridges that 
stretch northward towards the British line, in Idaho. 
The latter Territory is one of the finest game regions 
on the Continent, as it boasts of nearly every animal 
