in the wilderness. Unlike other birds, however, he grows wilder
and wilder by nearness to men's dwellings. I suppose that is
because the presence of man is so often accompanied by the rush
of a dog and the report of a gun, and perhaps by the rip and
sting of shot in his feathers as he darts away. Once, in the
wilderness, when very hungry, I caught two partridges by slipping
over their heads a string noose at the end of a pole. Here one
might as well try to catch a bat in the twilight as to hope to
snare one of our upland partridges by any such invention, or even
to get near enough to meditate the attempt.

But there was one grouse--and he the very wildest of all that I
have ever met in the woods--who showed me unwittingly many bits
of his life, and with whom I grew to be very well acquainted
after a few seasons' watching. All the hunters of the village
knew him well; and a half-dozen boys, who owned guns and were
eager to join the hunters' ranks, had a shooting acquaintance
with him. He was known far and wide as "the ol' beech pa'tridge."
That he was old no one could deny who knew his ways and his
devices; and he was frequently scared-up in a beech wood by a
brook, a couple of miles out of the village.

Spite of much learned discussion as to different varieties of
grouse, due to marked variations in coloring, I think personally
that we have but one variety, and that differences in color are
due largely to the different surroundings in which they live. Of
all birds the grouse is most invisible when quiet, his coloring
blends so perfectly with the roots and leaves and tree stems
among which he hides. This wonderful invisibility is increased by
the fact that he changes color easily. He is darker in summer,