34 
PINNATED GROUS. 
of the Indiana territory, and Upper Louisiana; and according 
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 
calculated 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 ob- 
served them to avoid the high-timbered groves that occur here 
and there in the Barrens. Connected with this fact is a circum- 
stance 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 confine- 
ment this peculiarity has been taken notice of. While I was in 
the state of Tennesee, a person living within a few miles of 
Nashville had caught an old hen Grous in a trap; and being 
obliged to keep her in a large cage, as she struck and abused 
the rest of the poultry, he remarked that she never drank; and 
that she even avoided that quarter of the cage where the cup 
containing the water was placed. Happening one day to let 
some water fall on the cage, it trickled down in drops along 
the bars, which the bird no sooner observed, than she eagerly 
picked them off, drop by drop, with a dexterity that showed 
she had been habituated to this mode of quenching her thirst; 
and probably to this mode only, in those dry and barren 
tracts, where, except the drops of dew, and drops of rain, 
water is very rarely to be met with. For the space of a week 
he watched her closely to discover whether she still refused to 
drink; but, though she was constantly fed on Indian corn, the 
