APRIL 24 
MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
263 
SCItq Uatutalisi 
AMERICAN GAME BIRDS.-V. 
THE RUFFLED BROUSE (TETRAD UMBEUUS). 
The Ruffled Grouse, or as it is often, 
though incorrectly, called, Partridge, and 
Pheasant, is well known over the United 
States. Its bill is short and stout, the base 
covered by feathers of a brown color ; iris, 
hazel ; head and neck, small ; body, bulky ; 
feet, of ordinary length, yellowish gray ; 
shank, feathered, excepting lower part of 
front; plumage, compact, glossy; feathers 
of head, narrow and elongated into a curved 
tuft ; on the neck is an erective. ruff of elon¬ 
gated feathers, of which the upper are silky, 
shining and curved forwurd at the end, 
which is broad and rounded ; wings, short, 
broad, curved, rouuded; tail, long, ample, 
rounded, of IS feathers ; top of head, bright 
yellowish red; back, rich chestnut, marked 
by oblong white spots, margined with black ; 
throat and lower part of neck, light brown¬ 
ish yellow ; lower ruff feathers, same color, 
barred with reddish brown ; upper ones, 
black, with three reflections; tuft of light 
chestnut ; feathers under the wings ; the 
rest of under parts yellowish white, with 
spots of brownish red ; tail, reddish yellow, 
barred and mottled with yellow, and termi¬ 
nated by a broad band of black between 
two narrow bands of bluish white, of which 
one is terminal. 
The plumage of the females is less devel¬ 
oped and less beautiful; the tuft on head 
and ruff on neck are less elongated. 
“The eggs usually measure au inch and a 
half in length by an inch and two-twelfths 
in breadth, and are of an uniform dull, yel¬ 
lowish tint.”— A udubon. 
The nest is merely a little hollow in the 
dead leaves, usually near an old log or 
stump, or in some other sheltered situation. 
The young leave the nest as soon as hatched 
and follow the cluck of the mother in the 
same manner as domestic chickens. When 
alarmed the little chicks disappear as if by 
magic, while the mother bird endeavors to 
attract attention to herself. Sometimes, 
when near a brood thus alarmed, one hears 
the faintest noise, like a whispered “peep,” 
whether made by the old or young, I do not 
know. 
“The male of this species is distinguished 
for his peculiar drumming, which is per¬ 
formed standing upon a log, in a thick part 
of the woods, and rapidly beating his sides 
for about half a minute at a time with his 
wings. This operation is repeated about 
once in 8 or 10 minutes, and the sound pro¬ 
duced, somewhat resembling distant thun¬ 
der, is often hoard at the distance of half a 
mile.”— Thompson. 
Probably no other game birds of this 
country are found in such a variety of 
hauuts as the Ruffled Grouse, for though 
their favorite resort is the wooded, rocky 
hills, where the deciduous trees are thickly 
interspersed with dense growths of ever¬ 
greens, many breed in level lowland wood.-, 
and arc found there, and iu cedar and tama¬ 
rack swamps, and in those in which there 
are few or no evergreens ; along the wooded 
borders of sluggish streams where wild 
grapes abound, on which they greatly de¬ 
light to feed : among thickly-sprouting sec¬ 
ond-growth white birches, on high or low 
laud; in newly - cleared lands where the 
blackberry and raspberry bushes have 
spruug up in thickets, and along the edges 
of buckwheat fields lying near to woodland ; 
indeed, in almost all kinds of cover, except 
meadow-grass and treeless marshes, though 
along the wooded margins of the last he is 
not unfrequeutly found. 
A considerable portion of the eastern shore 
of Lake Champlain is clothed with a belt of 
woods, for ths most part consisting of white 
cedars, branching near the ground, and so 
thickly that it is no easy task to make one’s 
way through them, and here tlie Ruffled 
Grouse are often flushed in considerable 
numbers, but not so often seen, though 
rising near at hand, so that it is luck indeed 
to get a shot at one here. This great diver¬ 
sity of haunts and their wandering propen¬ 
sities make them uncertain birds to find, and 
in a place where they are in scores to-day 
you may not find one tu-morrow. I aemem- 
ber hunting closely over a piece of moun¬ 
tainous woodland of some hundreds of acres 
in extent without finding a fail'd, till at last 
my companion and I came out upon th 9 
crest of a knoll overlooking a narrow gully, 
along which trickled a small rill, and from 
this we flushed certainly net less than a hun¬ 
dred Ruffled Grouse, which whirred up by 
ones, by twos and by dozens. This was in a 
time of drouth, and they had probably 
gathered there for water. On another oc¬ 
casion, on a cold, blustering, but sunny day, 
late in fall, I hunted over the same ground 
and found not a bird till I came into au old 
pasture where there were numerous young 
pines from two to four feet high, and al¬ 
most evei-y one was the shelter of a Ruffled 
Grouse, 
Q$l0rh[ultui{al. 
SPECIALTIES IN FLORICULTURE—II. 
BY E. S. CARMAN. 
The incipient love of flowers is greatly in- 
There is a habit of this bird so common tensified by success—let it be ever so trifling 
here that I cannot think its peculiar to this ' —and greatly lessened by failure. Our first 
. ■ 
, ra.' sr 
yojijL -T 3 : r:< - 
R.TJF’F’JL.KD GROUSE. 
region, and yet it is so noticeable that, if it 
is not so, I wonder I never have seen mon- 
tion made of it. Here, in autumn, about 
the. time of the falling of the leaf, many indi¬ 
viduals of this species are often seen a long 
distance from the woods they inhabit and 
close about dwellings. I have frequently 
flushed them within a few rods of our house, 
and once started one from a wagon-box un¬ 
der the shed, and saw another in a barn, and 
one of our hired men actually caught one in 
the hog-pen ; another was seen on the stoop, 
and ouo morning as we were eating break¬ 
fast another came close under the window 
near which the table stood; all these, at 
least, were a mile from any woods where 
these birds haunt. The theory of an old 
hunter, that they were frightened from the 
woods by the failing of t-be leaves, seems as 
reasonable au explanation of this curious 
fact as any I ever heard advanced. 
Except in isolated thickets from which he 
cannot ruu without exposing himself, I be¬ 
lieve this bird will not lie to dogs. He is 
oftencst hunted with a dog that will bark on 
finding him and so chase him till he takes to 
a tree, and continues barking till the shooter 
comes up. It is held, theoretically, unsports¬ 
manlike to shoot him sitting ; hut it is doubt¬ 
ful whether many sportsmen practice what 
they preach in this particular case. 
The shooting of the cocks on their “drum¬ 
ming logs” in spring is an abomination, as 
is the killing of any of these birds in any 
way at this seasou. Here in the North, from 
the 1st of March, at latest, till the 20th of 
August or 1st of September, should be the 
close season. r. e. r. 
-♦ ♦♦-- 
TO TRAP MOLES. 
In Rural New-Yorker, Feb. 27, Mr. Car¬ 
man gives a chapter on moles and wants an 
exterminator. A neighbor uses a trap or 
dead fall. Take an inch board 0 or 7 inches 
wide and 4 or 5 feet long, bore three holes, I 
foot from the end and 1 inch from each edge. 
Grind sharp 6 6-inch spikes; drive them 
through to the head. Make a set of fig. 4 
“triggers” with a paddle-like end ; go to a 
burrow, press down the loose dirt into the 
hole to make the surface level; place the 
trap so that the spikes are over the hole 
or burrow. Set the triggers with the paddle 
end fiat on the ground, luy a stone on for a 
weight; the mole will raise the dirt in the 
same place and will throw the trap, the 
spikes being on each side will pin him fast 
no matter which way he comes. 
Another Take an earthen jar il gallon or 
more) sink the jar deep enough to bring the 
top (mouthi level with the bottom of the 
moles, burrow fill the dirt nicely around and 
cover with a piece ofboard ; the mole will 
tumble in and cannot climb out, Mr. B. 
says, “Take two cow horns and place one 
each w r ay iu the hole with small ends to¬ 
gether, the mole will force himself in so 
tightly that he cannot get out. 
A. C, Huffy an. 
step in response to this latent yearning is 
generally to visit a neighboring florist and 
to purchase those plants which in full bloom 
seem to promise us the most delight. We 
take them from the humid, congenial air of 
the hothouse to the impure, parched, and 
ever-varying air of the windows of our homes 
and, though we squander upon them our 
most sedulous care, their leaves wither and 
drop off one by one and, as if scorning our 
fidelity, soon dwindle away. “ We have not 
the knack of raising plants,” is the reason¬ 
able but ofttimos erroneous conclusion ar¬ 
rived at. It is not considered that with the 
same plants and in a similar situation no 
other hand would probably have met with 
better success ; and so, judging all others by 
those which so disappointed us, no further 
attempt is made and the poor window-gar¬ 
den abandoned. Thus, a natural fondness 
for flowers which might have been developed 
so as to have afforded one of the foremost 
joys (if not objects) of our lives, is nipped in 
the bud and forever relinquished. There is 
no “ knack” or subtlety about it. A plant 
will thrive if it be giveuthe nourishment and 
the temperature which its constitution ex¬ 
acts—not without; aud the adroitness re¬ 
quired to ascertain those is soon acquired by 
those who are foud enough of flowers to be 
willing systematically to study their wants 
and who are not too Indolent to supply them. 
Another drawback on the part of those 
who have not attended closely to horticul¬ 
tural studies is that iL is indiscriminately as¬ 
sumed that for all plants which are worth 
rearing, costly structures and heatiug appa¬ 
ratus are Indispensable. We need not dwell 
upon the general accuracy of this assumption 
any furbxer than to present the exception of 
Pelargonium culture, in which every step 
from the collection of the parent plants, their 
cross-fertilization, the formation, maturation 
and planting of the seeds, to the flowering 
of thecross-bredseedlings, may be conducted 
without the aid of cold frames, hot-beds, bot¬ 
tom heat, hot-houses or conservatories. A 
south or east window of any room in which 
the temperature is maintained at about 70° 
during the day and is not permitted to fall 
much beneath oO at night, will furnish every 
requisite condition of success. 
The Geranium stands in no need of praise 
from us. In a word, it is deservedly the most 
popular plant of the present day the world 
over for the conservatory and parlor, and has 
few equals (the Tricolors excepted) as a bed¬ 
ding plant, it commands A prominent place 
in collections the moat pretentious as well as 
in collections the most simple ; and when we 
see Pretension and Simplicity kindly united 
upon the same thing of beauty, we may rest 
assured that it is possessed of a high order 
of merit. 
We would state that of all the floral pur¬ 
suits that we harve engaged in, not one other 
lias ever afforded half the delight that we 
have experienced from this one of crossing 
Geraniums and raising plants from the seed 
so produced; and we presume to hope that 
many of our Rural friends who have sighed 
for flower pets during the long winter and 
who have given up their cultivation as they 
have recalled the discouraging results of pre¬ 
vious ill-advised selections will, from follow¬ 
ing us, be induced to try just once more. 
Inquiries appear now and t hen ns to what 
constitutes the difference between the Gera¬ 
nium and the Pelargonium, Had Pelargo¬ 
nium been the general term in use instead 
of Geranium, this entanglement, would have 
been unlikely to occur, since oil of the tender 
plants offered by Uorists which we call Gera¬ 
niums are Pelargoniums, and the Geraniums 
(properly so-called) arc nil of them hardy 
plants with which, as conservatory orna¬ 
ments, we. have noth ing to do. Pelargoniums, 
such as we now call Lady Washington, which 
many years ago wore rather distinguished 
by penciled rays in their upper petals than 
by the beautiful and abrupt blotches of those 
of the present time, wore derived from cross¬ 
ing and intercrossing between such species 
as Pelargonium, odorntissimum, P. tricolor, 
P. Watsonii, grand,iflorum, graveulcns, quer- 
eifolinm, fnqninnns, and many others. The 
name of Lady Washington, as we arc in¬ 
formed by Mr. Jar. IIooo, editor of the 
American Garden, was first given to a seed¬ 
ling of his father’s in the year 182.>, and the 
exceeding popularity of the name induced its 
general adoption for all Pelargoniums of this 
class. 
An unerringly distinctive feature between 
t hese two genera is in the possession of the 
Pelargonium of a little tube in the top of the 
pedicel or branchlot of the flower stalk the 
size of a. small wheat kernel, situated exactly 
between the two upper petals at their claws 
or base. This is covered by the top sepal of 
the calyx, which is distinctly larger than the 
others and indicatesat once its position. The 
flower of the Geranium is regular — i. e., 
the petals are similar in shape, while that of 
the Pelargonium is irregular, the two upper 
differing in shape and generally in markings 
and coloration, from the three lower petals. 
This difference, however, by long-continued 
selection aud crossing, has been nearly anni¬ 
hilated in several late varieties, such as Jean 
Sisley, Harry King and many others—the 
petals of which are in well-grown specimens 
imbricated aud e’osely similar. The rays, 
however, do not entirely disappear, and the 
rudiments at least—of which there is not a 
trace in the Geranium—may be observed in 
all the Pelargoniums, whether Nosegays, 
Bronzes, Tricolors or plain Zonales. 
Further distinctions are that the Geranium 
is rarely shrubby, often tumid at joints; 
peduncle one, two or three - flowered ; ten 
perfect stamens, the five alternate ones long¬ 
er, each with a nectariferous gland at base. 
It is found chiefly in Northern temperate 
zones. The Pelargonium is often shrubby ; 
bears its flowers in timbrels; ten stamens, 
three imperfect ; nearly all of them indige¬ 
nous to the Cape of Good Hope. 
Spec.ifiically, therefore, ir, is as informal to 
term Pelargoniums Geraniums, or converse¬ 
ly, as it would be to name Nasturtiums and 
Balsams Geraniums which, according to late 
and high authorities, are all classed under 
the same order, viz., Geraniaccae. But as a 
comprehensive word Geranium, so widely 
known and so easily spoken, is iu nowise 
objectionable. 
In descriptive floral catalogues we read of 
“Hybrid, hybridized, carefully hybridized” 
flower seed of Pelargoniums, Antirrhinums, 
Petunias, etc., etc. It is unprofessional and 
discreditable that seedsmen, to Induce a 
ready sale of these high priced seeds thus 
advertised, should at once encourage the con¬ 
fusion of distinct botanical terms while they 
circulate captivating doscriptions which can¬ 
not possibly be true. A hybrid, is produced 
fay tne mixing of two genera under the sumo 
order and the offspring is generally sterile 
and short-lived. Themixlure of a Geranium 
and a Pelargonium, of an orange and a lemon, 
of a Petunia and a Potato, would be true hy¬ 
brids, and would require perhaps hundreds 
of trials before, if at all, a single union could 
be effected ; so that, even though this were 
desirable, it is impossible that thousands of 
seed offered as such by florists, could have 
been produced by this process. If we extend 
the word hybrid as applicable to the crossing 
of different species under the same genus, as 
many authorities do, it clearly is in no wise 
applicable to the crossing of different varie¬ 
ties of the same species. 
Cross, or cross-ored. is the offspring of two 
species of the same genus, or of the closer 
relationship of two varieties of the same spe¬ 
cies. The cross-fertilization of Pelargonium 
peltatum (Ivy Geranium) with P. graveolena 
(Rose Geranium) would be an Instance of the 
first ; the crossing of the Bronze Zonales 
“Caulderdale” and “ MaeMuhon,” of the sec¬ 
ond. Cross fertilization Is a simple and gen¬ 
erally efficacious process which, though it 
has been described in detail again and aguiu, 
must here, in outline at least, be gone over 
once more and will make the subject of our 
next article. 
River Edge, Bergen Co., N. J. 
