GROUSE 119 



sisted of vegetable matter, 83.69 per cent, and animal matter, 

 16.41 per cent. * * * 



The vegetable part of the food consisted of grain, 17.38 per 

 cent; various seeds, chiefly weeds, 52.83 per cent; fruit, 9.57 

 per cent; and miscellaneous vegetable matter, 3.81 per cent.* 



The animal matter consisted largely of beetles, grasshoppers, 

 and bugs and included many serious insect pests, such as the 

 potato beetle, cucumber beetle, squash beetle, cutworms, 

 tobacco worm, army worm, cotton worm, cotton bollworm, 

 Rocky Mountain locust, and chinch bugs.* 



GROUSE: Family Tetraonidae. 



RUFFED GROUSE; "PHEASANT": Bmasa umbeUm 

 umheUus (Linnaeus). 



State records. — The ruffed grouse, or "pheasant," as it is 

 called in the South, in former times ranged southward along 

 the mountains probably to the point where they terminate. 

 Joel Burgess, who lives at Dean, in the Talladega Mountains, 

 tells me that his father often spoke of having killed "pheas- 

 ants" in that locality in the days of the early settlement of 

 the country, E. W. Graves states that in the winter of 1909- 

 1910 he saw one of these birds in a gulch on Sand Mountain, 

 southeast of Carpenter. In April, 1912, and October, 1916. 

 Mr. Graves and the writer hunted for several days on Sand 

 Mountain without finding any of the birds, although residents 

 of the region reported seeing them occasionally. One man 

 stated that in the summer of 1913 he had seen an old female 

 with a brood of young in a field at Carpenter. This is prob- 

 ably the last remnant of this splendid game bird in the State, 

 but if birds could be secured from other States there seems 

 to be no good reason why the species might not be re- 

 established in many favorable localities and, if afforded 

 proper protection, in time spread over a large part of the 

 State. The rough, mountainous country along the Warrior 

 River, in northern Tuscaloosa County and southwestern Jef- 

 ferson County, impressed me as being an ideal situation for 

 such an experiment, and portions of Lookout Mountain are 

 equally favorable. 



•Judd, S. D., Biol. Surv. Bull. 21, pp. 27-28, 1905. 



