214 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
covered with forest. These birds are very rare— 
in fact, may almost be considered extinct in the North- 
ern and Middle States. Within a few years they were 
quite abundant on some portions of Long Island. They 
were also to be found in Burlington County, N. J., 
and in some few other places. There are, however, 
still a few to be found on the Jersey plains, and every 
season we hear of some of our sporting acquaintances 
exterminating a small pack. We know of ten braces 
being killed this season (1848), and about the same 
number last year by the same party; and, as usual, in 
both instances these scarce and beautiful birds were 
butchered long before the time sanctioned by the strong 
—or, rather, the weak—arm of the law. 
“Thus it is that the destructive hand of the would- 
be respectable poacher, as well as the greedy gun of 
the pothunter, hastens to seal the fate of the doomed 
prairie hen in these eastern regions, and we may 
predict with great certainty that ere long not one will 
be found, save upon the rich plains of the West; from 
which also, in course of time, they will be driven and 
ultimately perish, root and branch, from before the 
unerring guns of their ruthless destroyers. We un- 
derstand that there are still a few of these birds to be 
found in Pennsylvania—we believe in Northampton 
County—where the pine forests are thin and open and 
the country about them such as prairie hens delight in. 
They have always been abundant in the barrens of 
Kentucky and Tennessee, as also in the balmy plains 
and fertile prairies of Louisiana, Indiana and Illinois. 
