60 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
peculiarities ; for alas, there was neither voice or action, nor de¬ 
licacy of flavor in the shrunk and decayed skin from which the 
former took his figure and the latter his description ; and to this 
circumstance must be attributed the barrenness and defects of 
both. This rare bird, though an inhabitant of different and 
very distant districts of North America, is extremely particular 
in selecting his place of residence, pitching only upon those 
tracts whose features and productions correspond with his mode 
of life, and avoiding immense intermediate regions that he 
never visits. Open, dry places, thinly interspersed with trees, or 
partially overgrown with shrub-oak, are his favorite 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 trees and shrub-oaks of Pocano, in 
Northampton County, in Pennsylvania; over the whole extent of 
the barrens of Kentucky, on the luxuriant plains and prairies of 
the Indiana and Upper Louisiana, and according to the informa¬ 
tion of the late Governor Lewis, on the vast 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 circum¬ 
stances :—First, their mode of flight is generally direct and labo¬ 
rious—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 county— 
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, 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 Tennessee, a person, living within a few miles of Nashville, 
