MEMORANDA.

1. The Ruffed Grouse, or, as we have consented to call it, the Pheasant, is found in all the wild and mountainous districts of our country, from the most northern latitudes as far south as Georgia.

2. They are called Partridge in the Eastern, Pheasant in the Middle, and Grouse in the Southern States. There are no Pheasants, properly speaking, in America.

3. These Birds commence pairing in March and April. The nest usually contains from five to twelve eggs.

4. The Cock Pheasant is not faithful to one mate alone; neither does he assist in incubation, or in the care of the brood. They associate together in small bands till the young are full grown, when they all pack indiscriminately together.

5. The Cock Bird attracts the attention of the Hen, and seduces her from her nest, by making a peculiar noise, termed Drumming.

6. At the Drumming season they are very pugnacious, and frequent battles take place among the males at this time.

7. The prevalent opinion that the flesh of the Pheasant becomes poisonous by partaking of the leaves and berries of the mountain laurel, is all fallacious, and may, without hesitation, be classed among the list of vulgar errors.

8. Pheasants are partial to wild strawberries, dewberries, whortleberries, &c., in fact, all kinds of fruit; their flesh is white, and far more delicate than that of the Prairie Hen.

"Hurrah for the Prairie! No blight on its breeze,

No mist from the mountains, no shadow from trees."

DESCRIPTION.

THIS species of Grouse is very different in many respects from the last-mentioned variety. Its appearance, habits, flesh, are all quite dissimilar, and we regret never having had very full opportunities for studying these interesting Birds in their natural haunts, the rich Prairies of the far West. However, we, as many others, have this pleasure still in anticipation, and in the mean time will endeavor to lay before our sporting friends all the information upon this head that we have culled from reading and conversing with those who have been in the habit of hunting these Birds for years past; and trust, at all events, that we shall succeed in making this chapter as interesting as some others that we have compiled for the benefit of Sportsmen.

Wilson thus describes this Bird. The Pinnated Grouse is nineteen inches long, twenty-seven inches in extent, and when in good order weighs about three pounds and a half; the neck

is furnished with supplemental wings, each composed of eighteen feathers, five of which are black, and about three inches long; the rest shorter, also black, streaked laterally with brown, and of unequal lengths; the head is slightly crested; over the eye is an elegant semicircular comb of rich orange, which the Bird has the power of raising or relaxing; under the neck wings are two loose pendulous and wrinkled skins, extending along the sides of the neck for two-thirds of its length, each of which, when inflated, resembles in bulk, color, and surface, a middlesized orange; chin cream-colored; under the eye runs a dark streak of brown; whole upper parts mottled transversely with black, reddish-brown, and white; tail short, very much rounded, and of a plain brownish soot color; throat elegantly marked with touches of reddish-brown, white, and black; lower parts of the breast and belly pale brown, marked transversely with white; legs covered to the toes with hairy down of a dirty drab color; feet dull yellow, toes pectinated; vent whitish; bill brownish horn color, eye reddish hazel. The female is considerably less; of a lighter color, destitute of the neck wings, the naked yellow skin on the neck, the semicircular comb of yellow over the eye.

LOCATION.

The Prairie Hen was no doubt formerly widely disseminated over our whole country, more particularly in those portions interspersed with dry, open plains, surrounded by thin shrubbery or scantily covered with trees. Unlike the Ruffed Grouse, this Bird delights in the clear, open Prairie grounds, and will desert those districts entirely that, in the lapse of time, become covered with forests. These Birds are very rare; in fact, may almost be considered extinct in the Northern and Middle States. Within a few years, they were quite abundant on some portions of Long Island. They were also to be found in Burlington County, New Jersey, and in some few other places. There are, however, still a few to be found on the Jersey Plains, and every season we hear of some of our sporting acquaintances exterminating a small pack. We know of ten braces being killed this season (1848), and about the same number last year, by the same party; and, as usual, in both instances these scarce and

beautiful Birds were butchered long before the time sanctioned by the strong or rather the weak arm of the law.

Thus it is that the destructive hand of the would-be respectable Poacher, as well as the greedy gun of the Pot-hunter, hastens to seal the fate of the doomed Prairie Hen in these Eastern regions, and we may predict with great certainty that ere long not one will be found save upon the rich plains of the West; from which, also, in course of time, they will be driven, and ultimately perish, root and branch, from before the unerring guns of their ruthless destroyers. We understand that there are still a few of these Birds to be found in Pennsylvania, we believe in Northampton County, where the pine forests are thin and open, and the country about them such as Prairie Hens. delight in. They have always been abundant in the barrens of Kentucky and Tennessee, as also in the balmy plains and fertile Prairies of Louisiana, Indiana, and Illinois. So numerous were they a short time since in the barrens of Kentucky, and so contemptible were they as Game Birds, that few Huntsmen would deign to waste powder and shot on them. In fact, they were held in pretty much the same estimation, or rather abhorrence, that the Crows are now in Pennsylvania or other of the Middle and Southern States, as they perpetrated quite as much mischief upon the tender buds and fruits of the orchards, as well as the grain in the fields, and were often so destructive to the crops that it was absolutely necessary for the farmers to employ their young negroes to drive them away by shooting off guns and springing loud rattles all around the plantations from morning till night. As for eating them, such a thing was hardly dreamed of, the negroes themselves preferring the coarsest food to this now much-admired Bird; while the young Sportsman exercised his skill in Rifle-shooting upon them, in anticipation of more exciting sport among the other prized denizens of the plain and forest. Prairie Hens have not only deserted Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, Elizabeth Island, New Jersey, and their other haunts to the eastward, but they have also removed even further west than the barrens of Kentucky, and are no longer to be found abundant save in Illinois, and on the extensive plains of the Missouri, Arkansas, and Columbia Rivers.

PERIOD OF PAIRING.

As soon as the winter breaks up, the pairing season commences, generally in March or early in April; then it is that one can distinguish the well-known booming sound of the male Bird, known as the "Tooting" of the Cock. This singular noise is produced by the inflation and exhalation of the two small bags which are found on the neck, and appear to be formed by the expansion of the skin of the gullet, which, when not filled with air, hangs in loose, pendulous, wrinkled folds.

Audubon remarks: "When the receptacles of air, which, in form, color, and size, resemble a small orange, are perfectly inflated, the Bird lowers its head to the ground, opens its bill, and sends forth, as it were, the air contained in these bladders in distinctly separated notes, rolling one after another from loud to low, and producing a sound like that of a large muffled drum. This done, the Bird immediately erects itself, refills its receptacles by inhalation, and again proceeds with its 'Tootings.'"

This "Tooting" can be heard at times as far off as a mile, more particularly on a clear mild morning. If the air-cells be punctured with a small sharp instrument of any kind, they cannot, of course, be again inflated, and the "Tootings" consequently are at an end.

These Birds, like the Ruffed Grouse, are extremely pugnacious at these times, and, during the early period of incubation, the males meet at early dawn at particular spots termed "scratching grounds," where they Toot and strut about with extended wings and wide-spread tails, much in the pompous style of Turkey Gobblers; and, after a little while thus spent in expressing their wrath and defiance, they engage in the most obstinate and sanguinary conflicts, not inferior to the battles often witnessed between Game Cocks.

During these encounters, they spring up in the air and strike their antagonists with the utmost fury, and oftentimes with the greatest effect; feathers are freely plucked from each other's bodies, and their eyes are not unfrequently seriously injured before one or other of the combatants gives way, and flies to the woods for shelter. A friend of the author, who is very