This was April 14th. On the 19th I made the experiment again. The drummer was at it as I drew near, and fortune favored me at last. I witnessed the performance three times over. Even now, to be sure, the prospect was not entirely clear, but it was better than ever before, and by this time I had learned to be thankful for small mercies. The grouse kept his place between the acts, moving his head a little one way and another, but apparently doing nothing else. Of course I had in mind the disputed question as to the method by which the drumming noise is produced. It had seemed to me that whoever would settle this point must do it by attending carefully to the first slow beats. This I now attempted, and after one trial was ready, off-hand, to accept a theory which heretofore I had scouted; namely, that the bird makes the sound by striking his wings together over his back. He brought them up, even for the first two or three times, with a quick convulsive movement, and I could almost have made oath that I heard the beat before the wings fell. But fortunately, or unfortunately, I waited till he drummed again; and now I was by no means so positive in my conviction. If an observer wishes to be absolutely sure of a thing,--I have learned this by long experience,--let him look at it once, and forever after shut his eyes! On the whole, I return to my previous opinion, that the sound is made by the downward stroke, though whether against the body or against the air, I will not presume to say. A man who is a far better ornithologist than I, and who has witnessed this performance under altogether more favorable conditions than I was ever afforded, assures me that his performer _sat down_! My bird took no such ridiculous position. So much, at least, I am sure of. When he had drummed three times, my partridge quit his boulder (I was near enough to hear him strike the dry leaves), and after a little walked suddenly into plain sight. We discovered each other at the same instant. I kept motionless, my field-glass up. He made sundry nervous movements, especially of his ruff, and then silently stalked away. I could not blame him for his lack of neighborliness. If I had been shot at and hunted with dogs as many times as he probably had been, I too might have become a little shy of strangers. To my thinking, indeed, the grouse is one of our most estimable citizens. A liking for the buds of fruit-trees is his only fault (not many of my townsmen have a smaller number, I fancy), and that is one easily overlooked, especially by a man who owns no orchard. Every sportsman tries to shoot him, and every winter does its worst to freeze or starve him; but he continues to flourish. Others may migrate to sunnier climes, or seek safety in the backwoods, but not so the partridge. He was born here, and here he means to stay. What else could be expected of a bird whose notion of a lover's serenade is the beating of a drum? OUT-DOOR BOOKS,