306 COCK OF THE PLAINS. 
mous habits, which are the cause of desperate combats between 
the males for the possession of the females. However long 
the period since it was first heard of in the accounts of hunters 
and travellers, no more was known than that there existed 
in the interior of America a very large species of grouse, 
called by the hunters of the west the prairie turkey. We 
have little to add, it is true, to what is known of its habits, 
but we have it in our power to say that we have seen it; we 
can determine its place in the system ; and now give a faithful 
representation of at least one sex. 
We have again to acknowledge ourselves indebted, no less 
to the industry and sagacity, than to the liberal views of Mr 
Leadbeater, for the present opportunity of representing this 
bird. His invaluable collection contains the only specimen 
known to be anywhere preserved. 
The name of cock of the plains was given by Lewis and 
Clark, and we have retained it, as being not only appropriate, 
but at the same time analogous to that of the large European 
species called cock of the woods. Similar reasons have influ- 
enced us in selecting the scientific name, which, though 
perhaps too long, and ill compounded, has nevertheless the 
advantage of combining analogy in meaning with the indica- 
tion of a most remarkable characteristic of the bird. This 
species 1s in fact distinguished from all others of its genus, 
and especially from its European analogue, by its long tail, 
composed of twenty narrow, tapering, acute feathers ; thus 
evincing the fallacy of the character erroneously attributed to 
all the grouse, of having broad and rounded tail-feathers. It 
is a singular fact, that both of the newly-discovered species 
from the north-western part of America, and they only, should 
be distinguished by the extraordinary number of the feathers 
of the tail. In the dusky grouse, however, they are broad 
and rounded. The cock of the woods, like the greater part 
of the species, has but eighteen, which are also broad and 
rounded. The only grouse in which they are found narrow 
is the sharp-tailed, though without being either acute or taper- 


