RUFFED GROUS. 
23 
unwholesome, and even dangerous. Great numbers of these 
birds are brought to our markets, at all times during fall and 
winter, some of which are brought from a distance of more than 
a hundred miles, and have been probably dead a week or two, 
unpicked and undrawn, before they are purchased for the table. 
Regulations prohibiting them from being brought to market, 
unless picked and drawn, would very probably be a sufficient 
security from all danger. At these inclement seasons, however, 
they are generally lean and dry, and indeed at all times their 
flesh is far inferior to that of the Quail, or of the Pinnated Grous. 
They are usually sold in Philadelphia market at from three 
quarters of a dollar to a dollar and a quarter a pair, and some- 
times higher. 
The Pheasant or Partridge of New England, is eighteen in- 
ches long, and twenty -three inches in extent; bill a horn colour, 
paler below; eye reddish hazel, immediately above which is a 
small spot of bare skin of a scarlet colour; crested head and neck 
variegated with black, red brown, white and pale brown; sides 
of the neck furnished with a tuft of large black feathers, twenty- 
nine or thirty in number, which it occasionally raises: this tuft 
covers a large space of the neck destitute of feathers; body above 
a bright rust colour, marked with oval spots of yellowish white, 
and sprinkled with black; wings plain olive brown, exteriorly 
edged with white, spotted with olive; the tail is rounding, ex- 
tends five inches beyond the tips of the wings, is of a bright 
reddish brown beautifully marked with numerous waving 
transverse bars of black, is also crossed by a broad band of 
black within half an inch of the tip, which is bluish white, 
thickly sprinkled and specked with black; body below white, 
marked with large blotches of pale brown; the legs are covered 
half way to the feet with hairy down, of a brownish white co- 
lour; legs and feet pale ash; toes pectinated along the sides, the 
two exterior ones joined at the base as far as the first joint by 
a membrane; vent yellowish rust colour. 
The female and young birds differ in having the ruff or tufts 
of feathers on the neck of a dark brown colour, as well as the 
bar of black on the tail inclining much to the same tint. 
