100 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



at the same time a foot deep. I see where one has wad- 

 dled along several rods, making a chain-like track 

 about three inches wide (or two and a half), and at 

 the end has squatted in the snow, making a perfectly 

 smooth and regular oval impression, like the bowl of a 

 spoon, five inches wide. Then-, six inches beyond this, 

 are the marks of its wings where it struck the snow on 

 each side when it took flight. It must have risen at 

 once without running. In one place I see where one, 

 after running a little way, has left four impressions of 

 its wings on the snow on each side extending eighteen 

 or twenty inches and twelve or fifteen in width. In one 

 case almost the entire wing was distinctly impressed, 

 eight primaries and five or six secondaries. In one 

 place, when alighting, the primary quills, five of them, 

 have marked the snow for a foot. I see where many 

 have dived into the snow, apparently last night, on the 

 side of a shrub oak hollow. In four places they have 

 passed quite underneath it for more than a foot; in 

 one place, eighteen inches. They appear to have dived 

 or burrowed into it, then passed along a foot or more 

 underneath and squatted there, perhaps, with their 

 heads out, and have invariably left much dung at the 

 end of this hole. I scared one from its hole only half a 

 rod in front of me now at 11 A. M. 



To resume the subject of partridges, looking further 

 in an open place or glade amid the shrub oaks and low 

 pitch pines, I found as many as twenty or thirty places 

 where partridges had lodged in the snow, apparently 

 the last night or the night before. You could see com- 



