490 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 26, 19x0. 
haps to-morrow the wild south wind may roar 
over the forest hilltops, and the river, fed by 
melting snow, break its bonds and go bounding 
on its way to the great valley. As yet, however, 
there has been no break in the continuity of the 
winter; no January thaw or February break-up. 
The snow lies as spotless as when in December 
it first covered moss and weed stalk and stubble 
field. All winter long it has creaked under foot 
and crusted over in the zero weather, and the 
sleigh bells have jingled. 
In some years, even in January, there comes 
to us for a little spell a breath of May—a balmy 
air like a lost Rocky Mountain chinook; but so 
far this winter there is no sign that life is bud¬ 
ding beneath its blanket of snow to be so soon 
bursting forth in a wealth of wild leaf and blos¬ 
som. One by one we saw them fall beneath the 
destroyer last autumn, and well we marked 
where they lay. Long after October frosts and 
November rains had laid waste and broken 
down the growths of summer time, the mosses 
and lichens, clinging to crags and tree trunks 
on forest slopes, held their varied wealth of 
emerald and bronzed green, coating the rocks 
in rounded and drooping folds of softest velvet 
and deep plush. 
There we rambled about on one of the last 
Indian summer days of November, the children 
gathering roots and moss, each piece seeming 
to them more lovely than that they had gath¬ 
ered, and a collie pup and two kittens following 
us, exploring the depths of fox dens and rabbit 
burrows. 
In a window box in the February sunshine 
the mossy rocks there gathered are still green, 
and among them little ferns and wood violets 
and all manner of forest things are springing. 
Nor is this garden of Eden in a window box 
void of animate beings, for but the other day 
two baby katydids came forth to view their 
world, and a little later a walkingstick, a long- 
geared fellow with horns, and in a cave in the 
rocks lives a fuzzy brown caterpillar which, as 
who can fail to see, typify Adam and Eve, the 
devil and the serpent. 
With the coming of spring all the hillsides 
will be strewn with the most delicate bloom, and 
thousands of wildwood things for which in my 
ignorance I have no name will riot over the 
neglected solitudes of brier and spring creek and 
meadows. 
In May the plum and crab thickets will per¬ 
fume the hollows, and in June the fragrance of 
the wild grape bloom and of the roses will come 
forth from cragged hillsides. In July the north¬ 
ern hillsides, the acres for which I would barter 
my life, where the forest creeps down to mingle 
with the haws, the prickly ash, the plum and 
crab thickets, the hazel and the berry briers, will 
be sweet with late roses and clover, and oh, so 
gloriously green! 
Doubtless it is all less lovely now than it may 
have been a hundred years ago before the ruth¬ 
less hand of the white man touched its vernal 
solitude, but to me it is an unexpected—an un¬ 
hoped for materialization of a dream. 
Too soon the thrifty farmer may send a man 
even here to grub out the brush and brier and 
tame to conventional ways my hillsides, but 
nature will reclaim it some day, and I find my¬ 
self wondering what a desolation this world of 
ours must be for those people of conventional 
ways who can see in nature only dollars, and for 
whom the rose and the crab tree bloom in vain. 
\ 
Ruffed Grouse—Partridge. 
» 
The ruffed grouse is found only in North 
America, and ornithologists recognize four geo¬ 
graphical races in different sections of the con¬ 
tinent. Of these four forms, the typical species 
(Bonasa umbellus ) inhabits the Eastern United 
States as far north as Northern Massachusetts, 
from there westward to and beyond the Missis¬ 
sippi River, probably through Ohio, Michigan, 
Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota, touching the 
eastern portions of North and South Dakota, 
Eastern Nebraska and Missouri, Arkansas, Ten¬ 
nessee, Kentucky, portions of North and South 
Carolina, Alabama and Georgia. The ruffed grouse 
of Northern New England and Canada, known 
as B. umbellus togata, the Canada ruffed grouse, 
is found also in Nova Scotia, Oregon and British 
Columbia. The gray ruffed grouse, Bonasa um¬ 
bellus umbelloides, occurs in the Central Rocky 
Mountains from Colorado, or even further south, 
« to Alaska, along the Yukon and McKenzie rivers, 
throughout much of British North America, east 
as far as Manitoba. . Another darker race, 
Bonasa umbellus sabini, inhabits the wooded 
country of the Coast range and the Pacific 
Ocean. It occurs on islands off the coast. It 
averages much darker than the Rocky Mountain 
form. 
All these forms are very similar in appear¬ 
ance, and it is not unusual to find in one locality 
a bird which, in color, may seem typical of some 
far distant locality. The most that can be said 
for these races is that they average lighter or 
darker—as the case may be—than certain others 
of their relations, the center of whose abund¬ 
ance may be far distant. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Bonasa umbellus. Above reddish brown or 
grayish brown varied with black, brown and 
gray in different shades, the scapulars and wing 
coverts streaked with whitish or cream color. 
The rump and upper tail coverts with long 
streaks or spots of grayish or yellowish. Tail 
long and wide, gray or reddish, more or less 
banded with paler, each pale band bordered by 
a narrow irregular blackish edge. A broad sub¬ 
terminal band of black or dark brown near the 
end, followed by a narrower terminal band of 
grayish. Feathers of the tufts on the side of 
the neck—the ruff—usually broadest at the ends 
and black in color, sometimes with greenish re¬ 
flections. Occasionally the ruff, instead of being 
black, is dark brown or even pale chestnut. The 
throat is pale buff sometimes dotted with darker. 
The lower parts are whitish or yellowish, barred 
with dull brown, broadest and darkest on the 
flanks. The lower tail coverts are white-tipped. 
The female is similar to the male, but smaller, 
and with the plumage slightly paler. At the 
same time the plumage often fails to give any 
suggestion of sex. There is a high-pointed crest 
on the head. The lower portion of the tarsus 
—that is of the foot—is naked. 
This is a general description of the ruffed 
grouse. The typical umbellus is described as 
mostly reddish above. The sub-species B. um¬ 
bellus umbelloides, is mostly gray and has the 
tail always gray. It is regarded as the Rocky 
Mountain form. 
B. umbellus togata, the Canada ruffed grouse, 
is mostly grayish and the tail is usually gray, 
but sometimes tinged with reddish. 
B. umbellus sabini is dark reddish with little 
or no gray. This is the northwest coast form 
found in the region of great precipitation, and 
by many'is considered the most beautiful of the 
ruffed grouse. 
The length of the ruffed grouse varies from 
sixteen to nineteen inches. The wing measures 
from seven to seven and a half inches and the 
tail from five and a half to seven. The extent 
of wings varies from twenty-two to twenty-five 
inches and the bird commonly weighs from 
twenty-one or twenty-two up to about thirty 
ounces. Grouse are often reported to weigh 
two and a quarter or two and a half pounds, 
but if birds so heavy are found, they must be 
very unusual. 
The ruffed grouse is the best known and most 
highly esteemed of the game birds of the North, 
and in Canada, New England, Northern New 
York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin it 
is now the most important of the upland birds. 
This is partly because it is very hardy and so 
can withstand the rigors of the winters which 
so often decimate bobwhite. 
In the South the bird is called “pheasant” and 
