330 
TETRAD CUPIDO. 
particular in selectingf 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 fevourite haunts. 
Accordingly we find these birds on the grouse plains of 
Nerv Jersey, in Burlington county, as well iis on the 
brushy plains of Long Island; among the pines and 
shrub oaks of Pocaiio, in Northampton county, Penn- 
sylvania; over the whole extent of the Barrens of 
Keiitucky ; on the luxuriant plains aud prairies of the 
Indiana territory, and Upper Louisiana; aud, according 
to the information of the late Governor Lewis, on the 
vast and remote plains of the Columbia river: in all 
these places preserving the same singular habits. 
Their predilection for such situations will he best 
accounted for by considering the following facts and 
circumstances: — First, their mode of flight is generallv 
direct, and laborious, and ill cahailated for the lahyrintii 
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 'theV 
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 grouse struck the stone chimney of his house with 
such force, as instantly to fall dead to the ground. 
Secondly, their known dislike of ])onds, marshes, nr 
watery i>laces, which they avoid on all occasions, drinkin? 
hut seldom, and, it is believed, never from such places- 
Even in confinement this ]>eculiarity has been taken 
notice of. While I was in the State of Tenuesec, ® 
person living within a few miles of Nhtshvillc had c.augl**’ 
an old heu grouse in a trap; and, being obliged to keep 
her in a largo cage, as she struck ami abused the rest 
of the poultry, he remarked that she never drank, and 
that she even avoided that quarter of the cage nhere 
