GROUSE-SHOOTING ON THE PRAIRIES. 299 
sailing past the shooter, very much allowance must be 
given, or the shot will surely fall behind them. 
The best. ground on which to look for them is the 
skirts of upland woods on the edge of grain and buck- 
wheat stubbles, or crags and knolls of red cedars, which 
are to be found interspersed amid cultivated fields. . 
On mountain sides, and in pine woods or laurel brakes, 
I regard it nearly lost time to look for them. It is much 
like seeking a needle in a hay-mow, and, if found, it is 
heavy odds against killing. 
The spruce partridge, and red-necked partridge, are 
out of the question; as they afford no sport. 
The other three varieties are now purely Western 
birds; for, although the first species. did formerly exist 
abundantly on the brush plains of Long Island, in the 
pines on the seashore of New Jersey, and on the scrub- 
oak mountains of North-eastern Pennsylvania, where per- 
haps a few scattered broods may still exist, they have be- 
come, to all intents and purposes, as a bird for sporting 
ends, extinct. 
These species are, the pinnated grouse, or prairie 
hen, which is identical with the heath hen, as it was 
called on the barren lands of Long Island, and the grouse 
of the Pennsylvania mountains and New Jersey pines; 
the sharp-tailed grouse, found nearly on the same line of 
country as the preceding variety, but somewhat farther to 
the West; and the great sage grouse, or cock of the 
plains, which is only found in the regions of the Arte- 
misia, in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, and 
on the verge of the American Salt Desert. 
