114 



PINNATED GROUS 



within a short distance. Three of these I afterwards carried home 

 with me. 



This rare bird, tho an inhabitant of different and very distant 

 districts of North America, is extremely particular in selecting his 

 place of residence ; pitching only upon those tracts whose features 

 and productions correspond with his modes of life; and avoiding 

 immense intermediate regions that he never visits. Open dry 

 plains, thinly interspersed with trees, or partially overgrown with 

 shrub-oak, are his favorite haunts. Accordingly we find these birds 

 on the Grous plains of New Jersey, in Burlington county, as well 

 as on the Brushy plains of Long island — among the pines and shrub- 

 oaks of Pocano, in Northampton county, Pennsylvania — over the 

 whole extent of the Barrens of Kentucky — on the luxuriant plains 

 and prairies of the Indiana territory, and Upper Louisiana ; and ac- 

 cording to the information of the late governor Lewis, on the vast 

 and remote plains of the Columbia river. In all these places pre- 

 serving the same singular habits. 



Their predilection for such situations will be best accounted 

 for by considering the following facts and circumstances. First, 

 their mode of flight is generally direct, and laborious, and ill cal- 

 culated for the labyrinth of a high and thick forest, crowded and 

 intersected with trunks and arms of trees, that require continual 

 angular evolution of wing, or sudden turnings, to which they are 

 by no means accustomed. I have always observed them to avoid 

 the high-timbered groves that occur here and there in the barrens. 

 Connected with this fact is a circumstance related to me by a very 

 respectable inhabitant of that country, viz. that one forenoon a 

 cock Grous struck the stone chimney of his house with such force 

 as instantly to fall dead to the ground. 



Secondly, their known dislike of ponds, marshes, or watery 

 places, which they avoid on all occasions, drinking but seldom, 

 and, it is believed, never from such places. Even in confinement 

 this peculiarity has been taken notice of. While I was in the 



