COCK OF THE PLAINS. 
TETRJ10 UR0PHJ1SIJ1NUS. 
Plate XXI. Fig. 2. 
'’i ■ * * • 
Tetrao urophasianus , Nob. in Zool. Journ. Lond. Id. JLpp. to Syn. Birds U S. p. 
442 , in Ann. Lyceum Nat. Hist. New-York. 
The Cock of the Plains , Lewis and Clark, Exp. II, p. 180 . Sp. 2. 
Mr. Leadheater's Collection in London , Female. 
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 
restricted within certain bounds, and is probably no where 
numerous, owing to its bulk, limited powers of flight, and the 
eagerness with which it is pursued; but chiefly to its polygamous 
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 travel¬ 
lers, no more was known than that there existed in the interior 
of America a very large species of Grous, called by the hunters of 
the west the Prairie Turkey. We have little to add, it is true, to 
what is known of its habits, but we have it in our power to say 
