330 
TETRAO CUPIDO. 
particular in selecting 1 his place of residence ; pitching- 
only upon those tracts whose features and productions 
correspond with his modes of life, and avoiding 1 immense 
intermediate regions that he never visits. Open dry 
plains, thinly interspersed with trees, or partially 
overgrown with shrub oak, are his favourite haunts. 
Accordingly we find these birds on the grouse plains of 
New Jersey, in Burlington county, as well as on the 
brushy plains of Long Island ; among the pines and 
shrub oaks of Pocano, in Northampton county, Penn- 
sylvania ; over the whole extent of the Barrens of 
Kentucky ; on the luxuriant plains and prairies 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 preserving 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 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 ponds, marshes, or 
watery places, which they avoid on all occasions, drinking 
but seldom, and, it is believed, never from such places. 
Even in confinement 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 grouse 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 
