THE PINNATED GROUSE. 95 



picked none of them up, so satiated with Grouse was he, as well as every 

 member of his family. My own servants preferred the fattest flitch of 

 bacon to their flesh, and not unfrequently laid them aside as unfit for 

 cooking. 



Such an account may appear strange to you, reader; but what will you 

 think when I tell you, that, in that same country, where, twenty-five years 

 ago they could not have been sold at more than one cent a-piece, scarcely one 

 is now to be found? The Grouse have abandoned the State of Kentucky, and 

 removed (like the Indians) every season farther to the westward, to escape 

 from the murderous white man. In the Eastern States, where some of 

 these birds still exist, game-laws have been made for their protection during 

 a certain part of the year, when, after all, few escape to breed the next 

 season. To the westward you must go as far at least as the State of Illinois, 

 before you meet with this species of Grouse, and there too, as formerly in 

 Kentucky, they are decreasing at a rapid rate. The sportsman of the 

 Eastern States now makes much ado to procure them, and will travel with 

 friends and dogs, and all the paraphernalia of hunting, a hundred miles or 

 more, to shoot at most a dozen braces in a fortnight; and when he returns 

 successful to the city, the important results are communicated to all 

 concerned. So rare have they become in the markets of Philadelphia, New 

 York and Boston, that they sell at from five to ten dollars the pair. An 

 excellent friend of mine, resident in the city of New York, told me that he 

 refused 100 dollars for ten brace, which he had shot on the Pocano 

 mountains of Pennsylvania. 



On the eastern declivities of our Atlantic coast, the districts in which the 

 Pinnated Grouse are still to be met with, are some portions of the State of 

 New Jersey, the "brushy" plains of Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, the 

 Elizabeth Islands, Mount Desert Island in the State of Maine, and a certain 

 tract of barreny country in the latter State, lying not far from the famed 

 Mar's Hill, where, however, they have been confounded with the Willow 

 Grouse. In the three first places mentioned, notwithstanding the preventive 

 laws now in force, they are killed without mercy by persons such as in 

 England are called poachers, even while the female bird is in the act of 

 sitting on her eggs. Excepting in the above named places, not a bird of 

 the species is at present to be found, until you reach the lower parts of 

 Kentucky, where, as I have told you before, a few still exist. In the State 

 of Illinois, all the vast plains of the Missouri, those bordering the Arkansas 

 river, and on the prairies of Opellousas, the Pinnated Grouse is still very 

 abundant, and very easily procured. 



As soon as the snows have melted away, and the first blades of grass issue 

 from the earth, announcing the approach of spring, the Grouse, which had 



