14 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
even the Beaver, after they shall have become extinct, even in the 
far West. 
It has been alleged, and by many is doubtless believed to be 
true, that the increase of population, the spread of cultivation, 
and the transfiguration of the woods and wastes into corn-lands 
and pastures, are in themselves an all-sufficient and irremediable 
cause for the disappearance of all the various kinds of game, the 
extinction of which the sportsman and the naturalist alike 
deplore. 
Were this the case, it would be needless to waste words on 
the subject—but so far is it from being the case, that with regard 
to very many kinds of game—several of those already 
cited, and others, which, though still numerous, will ere long 
be in the same predicament, so rapidly are they decreasing- -the 
very converse of the proposition is true. 
The Wild Turkey, the Pinnated Grouse, and its congener, the 
Ruffed Grouse, as also the much rarer bird of the same order, 
commonly known as the Spruce Partridge—the very existence 
of which was unknown to Wilson—all unquestionably do make 
their homes in the wilderness, the last-named there exclusively. 
But all the others, without exception, prefer the vicinity of cul¬ 
tivated regions on account of the plenty and choicer quality of 
the food ; and are found nowhere in such abundance as in those 
localities, which afford the combination of rough wild lying- 
ground, with highly cultivated land, on which to feed at morn 
and dewy eve. 
Thus, in the Eastern States, if you are in pursuit of the Ruffed 
Grouse, the surest places where to flush your game will not be 
the depths of the cedar swamp, or the summit of the mountain 
horrid with pine and hemlock, but on the slopes and ledges 
falling down to the cultivated vales, and in the skirts of briary 
woodlands, or in the red-cedar knolls, which remain yet unshorn 
in the midst of maize and buckwheat fields, which never fail to 
tempt this mountain-loving bird from his native fastnesses. 
In like manner, in the West, it is on the prairie, but in the 
vicinity of the boundless tracts of maize and wheat, which the 
industry of the white man has spread out over the hunting- 
