GENERAL INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 35 



bers so as to be greatly- perceptible. Immense 

 numbers are sent East which are taken in nets 

 and traps. Some, are killed by coming in contact 

 with the telegraph wires in their flight. But all 

 these causes would be inadequate to reduce the 

 stock much if the breeding birds had the nesting- 

 places which they formerly used. The grouse 

 used to breed in the prairies, commonly along the 

 edges of the sloughs. In many parts the prairies 

 are nearly all broken up and brought under cul- 

 tivation. Many now make their nests in the 

 fields of the farmer, and these nests are nearly all 

 broken up and destroyed by the ploughing in the 

 spring. Quail, whose nests are made in hedges 

 and corners of fences and under bunches of bram- 

 bles, escape, and we see them increase in numbers 

 in the very places where the grouse diminish. A 

 great source of destruction to the nests of the 

 grouse might be easily prevented. In most places 

 there are patches of prairie left for pasture, and 

 in these the birds build. Many farmers follow 

 a practice of burning these patches over late in 

 the spring, under a notion that it improves the 

 pasturage by causing the young grass to spring 

 tip fine and succulent as soon as the weather gets 

 warm. When these patches of prairie are burned 



