DUSKY GROUSE. 271 
dwarf-willows, which, with pines, form the principal vegeta- 
tion of these climates. The grouse feed almost exclusively 
on leaves, buds, berries, and especially the young shoots of 
trees, pines, spruce, or birch, resorting to seeds only when 
compelled by scarcity of other food, or when their usual means 
of subsistence are buried beneath the snow. They sometimes, 
especially when young, pick up a few insects and worms, and 
are fond of ants’ eggs. Like other gallinaceous birds, they 
are constantly employed in scratching the earth, are fond 
of covering themselves with dust, and swallow small pebbles 
and gravel to assist digestion. No birds are more decidedly 
and tyrannically polygamous. As soon as the females are 
fecundated, the male deserts them, caring no further about 
them nor their progeny, to lead a solitary life. Like perfidious 
seducers, they are full of attention, however, and display the 
greatest anxiety to secure the possession of those they are 
afterwards so ready to abandon. The nuptial season com- 
mences when the leaves first appear in spring. The males 
then appear quite intoxicated with passion ; they are seen, 
either on the ground, or on the fallen trunks of trees, with a 
proud deportment, an inflamed and fiery eye, the feathers of 
the head erected, the wings dropped, the tail widely spread, 
parading and strutting about in all sorts of extravagant 
attitudes, and expressing their feelings by sounds so loud as 
to be heard at a great distance. This season of ardour and 
abandonment is protracted till June. The deserted female 
lays, unnoticed by the male, far apart on the ground, among 
low and thick bushes, from eight to sixteen eggs, breeding but 
once in a season. ‘They sit and rear their young precisely in 
the manner of the common fowl, the chicks being carefully 
protected by the mother only, with whom they remain all the 
autumn and winter, not separating until the return of the 
breeding season. It is only at this period that the males seek 
the society of the females. 
The grouse are remarkably wild, shy, and untamable birds, 
dwelling in forests or in barren uncultivated grounds, avoid- 
