Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/528

492 State of Illinois, before you meet with this species of Grous, and there too, as formerly in Kentucky, they are decreasing at a rapid rate. The sportsman of the Eastern States now makes much ado to procure them, and will travel with friends and dogs, and all the paraphernalia of hunt- ing, an hundred miles or more, to shoot at most a dozen braces in a fort- night ; and when he returns successful to the city, the important results are communicated by letter to all concerned. So rare have they become in the markets of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, that they sell at from five to ten dollars the pair. An excellent friend of mine, resident in the city of New York, told me that he refused 100 dollars for ten brace, which he had shot on the Pocano mountains of Pennsylvania. On the eastern declivities of our Atlantic coast, the districts in which the Pinnated Grous are still to be met with, are some portions of the State of New Jersey, the " brushy" plains of Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, the Elizabeth Islands, Mount Desert Island in the State of Maine, and a certain tract of Barreny country in the latter State, lying not far from the famed Mar's Hill, where, however, they have been con- founded with the Willow Grous. In the three first places mentioned, notwithstanding the preventive laws now in force, they are killed without mercy by persons such as in England are called poachers, even while the female bird is in the act of sitting on her eggs. Excepting in the above named places, not a bird of the species is at present to be found, until you reach the lower parts of Kentucky, where, as I have told you before, a few still exist. In the State of lllinois, all the vast plains of the Missouri,

those bordering the Arkansas River, and on the prairies of Opellousas, the Pinnated Grous is still very abundant, and very easily procured. As soon as the snows have melted away, and the first blades of grass issue from the earth, announcing the approach of spring, the Grous, which had congregated during the winter in great flocks, separate into parties of from twenty to fifty or more. Their love season commences, and a spot is pitched upon to which they daily resort until incubation is established. Inspired by love, the male birds, before the first glimpse of day lightens the horizon, fly swiftly and singly from their grassy beds, to meet, to challenge, and to fight the various rivals led by the same impulse to the arena. The male is at this season attired in his full dress, and enacts his part in a manner not surpassed in pomposity by any other bird. Imagine them assembled, to the number of twenty, by day-break, see them all strutting in the presence of each other, mark their come-