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-
