THE PTARMIGAN. 215 
dread a human being, that they will often remain perched 
upon a limb till a snare on the end of a rod can be passed 
over their heads. This trustfulness of man’s good inten- 
tions toward them seriously militates against the amuse- 
ment they would otherwise afford the sportsman. By the 
residents of the localities this bird inhabits they are not 
considered good food, for the reason that their back and 
thighs strongly possess that peculiar game flavor for which 
epicures value the Scotch bird. No. 6 or 7 shot will be 
found the best suited for their destruction. 
Sacre Grovuss, or Sacz Hay, is a gross, heavy, awkward, 
but handsomely plumaged bird; it is almost unedible from 
living upon the buds of the wild sage plant, and can only 
be found where this shrub grows, viz., on the vast plains on 
the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, for several de- 
grees north and south of the thirty-eighth degree of lati- 
tude. 
PTARMIGAN. 
I remember asking a true representative of the Indian 
brave, a member of the Sioux tribe, what he thought the 
“happy hunting-ground ” was like that he hoped to go to 
when he left this world: his answer was, “ One vast coun- 
try without limits, divided into prairie, meadow, and tim- 
ber land, where all the wild game teemed, and was so reck- 
less of man’s presence that the hunter had but to slay and 
eat.” How much more admirable would this description 
be, if eating had been considered unnecessary, and that we 
could return the confidence of the inferior animal life with 
kindness—not death! The Indian, doubtless, had his im- 
agination controlled by the memory of some of the choicest 
hunting-grounds within the limits of his tribe’s extensive 
range of country, for theirs 7s a game country par excel- 
lence. But if my informant had been from some of the 
tribes that lay far off to the north, where the snows lay 
