502 
COCK OF THE PLAINS. 
COCK OF THE PLAINS.—TETRAO UROPH AS! ANUS. 
Plate XXL Fig. 2. 
Tetrao urophasianus, Noh. in Zool. Journ. Loud. Id. App. io Syn. Birds U.S. p. 
442, in Ann. Lyceum Nat. Hist. N. Nork. — The Cock of the Plains, Lewis and 
Clark, Exp. ii. p. 1.80, sp. 2, 
TETRAO UROPHASIANUS.— 
Tetrao (centrocercns) urophasianus, Swain. North. Zool. ii. p. 358, pi. 53. 
It is with the liveliest satisfaction that we are enabled finally 
to enrich the North American Fauna with the name, portrait, 
and description of this noble bird ; which must have formed 
from the earliest periods a principal ornament of the distant 
wilds of the west. Hardly inferior to the turkey in size, 
beauty, and usefulness, the cock of the plains is entitled to the 
first place in the beautiful series of North American grouse, in 
the same rank that the cock of the woods so justly claims 
among those of Europe and Asia. 
This fine bird, like its European analogue, seems to be re- 
stricted within certain bounds, and is probably nowhere nu- 
merous, owing to its bulk, limited powers of flight, and the 
eagerness with which it is pursued ; but chiefly to its polyga- 
mous habits, which are the cause of desperate combats between 
the males for the possession of the females. However long 
the period since it was first heard of in the accounts of hunters 
and travellers, no more was known than that there existed in 
the interior of America a very large species of grouse, called 
by the hunters of the west the prairie turkey. W e have little 
* This fine species, with the Tetrao phasianellus, have been made into a suh- 
genus by Mr Swainson. I have provisionally retained these birds in Tetrao, 
but have little doubt that this form will show its own and separate station among 
the Tetraonidcc. Mr Swainson thinks that it will represent the sconsorial form 
among these birds, from the structure of the tail ; while the black cock of Europe 
is placed by him to show the fistirostral form, by its lyre-shaped tail and glossy 
colour bearing a faint resemblance to the Drongo Shrikes. 
