THE RUFFED GROUSE. 153 
ferent seasons and places, ranging from rufous to chest- 
nut and gray. The ruff feathers are usually dark-brown 
or black; the adjacent plumage of the neck is tipped with 
white; the tail feathers are tipped with gray, and have a 
broad terminal bar of black, anterior to which are nine 
or ten undulated transverse bars which are gray before 
and black behind. The female closely resembles the 
male, but is smaller; the latter attains a length of eighteen 
inches, and a weight of a pound and a half, while she 
rarely exceeds fourteen inches in length, and a weight of 
one pound. The ruffed grouse is known indiscriminate- 
ly throughout the United States as the partridge and 
the pheasant, and in some portions of: Canada as the 
white-flesher, from the hue ‘of its meat. Being exceed- 
ingly wild and solitary in habit, it is not susceptible to 
domestication, for it shows greater fear of man than of 
the fox or hawk. 
Being found only in dense woods or tangled under- 
growth, and on rugged ground seamed by ravines and 
chasms, and often strewn with boulders, it is difficult of 
pursuit, and being strong and swift on the wing, and 
possessed of great vital power, it requires a quick eye 
and hard hitting to bring many to bag. Few persons 
can boast of bagging more than ten or fifteen brace a 
day, even in the forests of the Northwest, where it is 
most abundant, and those who shoot three or four brace 
in the same time, in other portions of the country, con- 
sider themselves fortunate. 
It is the emblem of a bird of the wilderness, and on 
meeting it amidst the silent woodland depths one feels 
hke apostrophizing it in the language of the poet, Hogg: 
* Bird of the wilderness, 
Blithesome and cumberless, 
Gay be thy matin o’er moorland and lea! 
Emblem of happiness, 
Blest be thy dwelling-place— 
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!” 
