THE PRAIRIE-GROUSE 71 



Going out one season with some army officers from 

 Fort Leavenworth as the guest of a railway official, 

 in a private car, the engineer whistled when the 

 grouse flushed before his engine and stopped while 

 we went in pursuit of the birds. There were but one 

 or two trains daily and the car seldom had to seek a 

 siding to avoid them. We had Gordon setters, Eng- 

 lish setters and pointers, young and old, and they 

 found and pointed the birds equally well. It was late 

 in August and the pointers suffered less from the heat 

 and were on that account the more serviceable dogs. 

 Use No. 7 or 8 shot early in the season ; 5 or 6 later. 



THE HEATH-HEN 



The earlier ornithologists regarded the heath-hen 

 as identical with the pinnated-grouse or prairie- 

 chicken of the Western prairies. It is closely allied 

 to the latter bird and so much like it in pattern and 

 color markings as to be easily mistaken for it. The 

 present habits of the two birds are, however, different, 

 since the heath-hen is found in the woods, its favorite 

 haunt being in scrub-oaks, where it feeds largely on 

 acorns and berries, going out, as the ruffed-grouse 

 goes, to the open fields for grain. The term heath- 

 hen seems inappropriate now that the bird is an 

 arborial species, but it may indicate that it was found 

 in the open years ago, when it was distributed over 

 Massachusetts, Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, 

 and Pennsylvania. It is now almost exterminated, and. 

 all that remain are in a limited area of about forty 

 square miles on the island of Martha's Vineyard, 



