The Ruffed Grouse begins her nest very early in May, and lays from eight to fifteen brownish-white, unspotted eggs, nearly the size of those of a pullet. With the exact period of this bird’s incubation I am not acquainted; the young birds run the instant they clip the shell; obey the cluck of the mother, as chickens that of the hen; and are tended by her with extreme care and solicitude. In case of her being surprised with her young about her, she resorts to all the artifices practiced by the Quail, and even by the comparatively dull and stolid Woodcock, to draw away the intruder from the vicinity, feigning lameness and incapacity to fly, until she shall have lured away the pursuer far from the hiding-place of her fledglings. Then she shall whirr away on resonant and powerful pinions, up, up above the tops of the tall pines and hemlocks, and thence skate homeward noiseless on balanced wings, where she will find them close ensconced among the sheltering fern-tufts, or the matted winter-greens and whortleberry bushes, viewless to the most prying eye, and undiscoverable, save to the nose of the unerring spaniel. But once returned, you shall see them emerge, chirping feebly at the soft maternal cluck, and hurrying to enshroud them under the shelter of her guardian wing, and nestle, happy younglings, among the downy plumage of her maternal breast. Curses upon the sacrilegious hand that would interrupt that sweet and tender scene by the sharp click of the murderous trigger; yet there be brutes, in the guise of men, who scruple not to butcher the drumming cock, taken at fatal disadvantage, amid his admiring harem; scruple not to slaughter the brooding mother above her miserable younglings—but to such we cry avaunt! to such we deny the name of sportsmen, nay, but of Christians, or of men! Get ye behind us, murderous pot-hunters!