INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
15 
grounds of the Indian, that the Pinnated Grouse is to be found 
in millions ; and the Turkey in similar situations, where the 
forest encircles the yet isolated clearings of the agricultural 
pioneer. 
Thus, of these three species, it is untrue that the spread of 
cultivation, unless in .so far as that involves the increased 
numbers and increased persecution of the cultivators, has any 
detrimental effect on their propagation, or in anywise tends to 
decrease their numbers. For centuries yet to come, let Ame¬ 
rican industry develope and extend American agriculture as 
rapidly as it may, there will be woodlands and wilds in abun¬ 
dance to furnish shelter for any quantity of game; and there 
will always be fastnesses innumerable, which never will, be¬ 
cause they never can , be cleared, owing to the roughness of 
their surface, and the sterility of their soil, whether from eleva¬ 
tion above the sea, rockiness or swampiness of situation, or 
other natural causes, which it needs not to enumerate. 
Other species of game, so far from flying cultivation, or ab¬ 
horring the vicinity of civilized man, are literally not to be found 
except where the works of the ox and the man are conspicu¬ 
ous ; never being seen at all in the wilderness proper, and 
giving cause for some speculation as to their whereabouts, 
their haunts, their habits, if not their existence on the conti¬ 
nent, previous to the arrival of civilized man, from realms 
nearer to the sun. 
Neither the Woodcock nor the Quail, Scolopax Minor, and 
Perdix, sive Ortyx Virginian a, are ever found in the depths 
of the untamed forest, aloof from human habitations ; though 
both genera frequent, nay require, woodland, as a sine qua non , 
for their habitation. Moreover, in places where they are entirely 
unknown to the first settlers, where they do not in fact exist at 
all, they speedily become abundant, so soon as the axe levels 
the umbrageous forest, and the admitted sunbeams awaken or 
mature the germs of that animal or vegetable life, on which the 
birds subsist. 
This is, I presume, so generally known as a fact, that no proof 
thereof is necessary. I may, however, mention two or three 
VOL. i. 4 
