PINNATED AND SAGE GEOUSE 
247 
until after the horse had been stolen. A species 
destroyed is rarely regained. 
To-day, the Prairie-Chicken is to be numbered 
with the buffalo and passenger-pigeon. It is 
so nearly extinct that only a few flocks remain, 
the most of which are in Kansas and Nebraska. 
If hunting them with dogs continues, five years 
hence the species will probably be quite extinct. 
Even as late as 1874, many birds were killed 
every winter by flying against the telegraph 
wires along the railways. 
The Prairie Sharp-Tailed Grouse 2 inhabits 
the Great Plains, from the states bordering the 
Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. It is the 
plains counterpart of the pinnated grouse, and 
like it, is rapidly disappearing before the set- 
SAGE-GROUSE. 
It is useless to describe this bird. The 
chances are that no reader of this book ever will 
see one outside of a museum, or a large zoological 
garden. 1 The great flocks of from one to three 
hundred that from I860 to 1875 were seen in 
winter in the Iowa cornfields, are gone forever. 
1 During the first four years of its existence, the 
N. Y. Zoological Park was able to secure only four 
living specimens. 
tlements that are fast filling up its home. The 
neck of the male lacks the side tuft of long, 
pointed feathers and the naked air-sac so con- 
spicuous on the male pinnated grouse. 
To-day, this bird is seldom seen in the open 
sage-brush plains and bad lands of Montana 
and Wyoming, but is occasionally found in or 
2 Ped-i-ae-ce'tes phas^i-an-el'lus cam-pes'tris. Av- 
erage length,' about 17 inches. 
