246 
ORDERS OF BIRDS— UPLAND GAME-BIRDS 
Nebraska were well stocked with Prairie-Chick- 
ens. 
In spring they courted openly, and even 
proudly. The cocks strutted, and inflated the 
bare, salmon-yellow air-sacs on the sides of their 
necks, bowed low, and “ Boo-hoo-hooed ! ” 
until the sound rolled over the bare earth in 
great waves. Then they scattered, to nest and 
rear their young. In summer, they hid them- 
selves closely; and no self-respecting farmer 
early spring, and the long, flaming days of July 
and August. If the farmers only had been far- 
sighted, and diligent in protecting for their all- 
too-scanty recreation, and for their own tables, 
the game that was theirs, they might have had 
Prairie-Chickens to hunt for a century. 
But the game-devouring octopi began to 
reach out, from Water Street, Chicago, and 
from New York and Boston. An army of men 
began to “shoot for the market,” and the Pin- 
PINNATED GROUSE, OR PRAIRIE-CHICKEN. 
dreamed of such a low act as killing one, or 
meddling with a nest. 
In the fall, after the harvesting, and just 
before the corn-cutting and corn-husking, the 
young broods were ready to fly, and the flocks 
began to gather. They first ranged through 
the wheat and oat stubble, gleaning; and the 
sport they furnished there, — dear me! Those 
were the golden days of life on a prairie-farm. 
The flocks of Pinnated Grouse and quail were 
the rightful heritage of the boys and men who 
toiled in the fields through the raw cold of 
nated Grouse and quail began to “go east,” 
by the barrel. Some markets were so glutted, 
time after time, that unnumbered barrels of 
dead birds spoiled. That was before the days 
of cold storage. 
The efforts that were made to stop that 
miserable business were feeble to the point of 
imbecility; and absolutely nothing permanent 
was accomplished. Had farmers generally 
stopped all shooting on their farms, as every 
farmer should, the war on those birds would 
have stopped also; but the barn was not locked 
