COCKBROR RAL LE ATNS. 395 
male bird from the Rocky Mountains in our plate, whilst the 
female, placed with the cock of the plains, that its reduced 
size may be properly estimated, has been chosen among the 
ordinary specimens having the tails tipt with red; the red 
tip being still more conspicuous in the common males, from 
which, in order to comprehend all, our description has been 
drawn up. 
COCK OF THE PLAINS. (Tetrao urophasianus.) 
PLATE XXI.—Fie. 2. 
Tetrao urophasianus, Vob. in Zool. Journ. Lond.—Id. App. to Syn. Birds U.S. 
p. 442, in Ann. Lyceum Nat. Hist. N. York.—The Cock of the Plains, 
Lewis and Clark, Exp. ii. p. 180, sp. 2. 
TETRAO UROPHASIANUS.—BONAPARTE.* 
Tetrao (Centrocercus) urophasianus, Swain. North. Zool. ii. p. 358, pl. 53. 
Ir is with the liveliest satisfaction that we are enabled finally 
to enrich the North American fauna with the name, portrait, 
and description of this noble bird, which must have formed 
from the earliest periods a principal ornament of the distant 
wilds of the west. Hardly inferior to the turkey in size, 
beauty, and usefulness, the cock of the plains is entitled to 
the first place in the beautiful series of North American 
grouse, in the same rank that the cock of the woods so justly 
claims among those of Hurope and Asia. 
This fine bird, like its Huropean analogue, seems to be 
restricted within certain bounds, and is probably nowhere 
numerous, owing to its bulk, limited powers of flight, and the 
eagerness with which it is pursued ; but chiefly to its polyga- 
* This fine species, with the Tetrao phasianellus, have been made into 
a subgenus by Mr Swainson. I have provisionally retained these birds 
in Tetrao, but have little doubt that this form will show its own and 
separate station among the Zetraonide. Mr Swainson thinks that it 
will represent the scansorial form among these birds, from the structure 
of the tail ; while the blackcock of Europe is placed by him to show 
the fistirostral form, by its lyre-shaped tail and glossy colour bearing a 
faint resemblance to the Drongo Shrikes.—Ep. 
