With startling suddenness out of the monotony of lifeless color in an eddying flurry of dead leaves, fanned to erratic flight by his wing-beats, the ruffed grouse bursts into view, in full flight with the first strokes of his thundering pinions, and you have a brief vision of untamed nature as it was in the old days. On either side of the vanishing brown nebula the ancient mossed and lichened trunks rear themselves again, above it their lofty ramage veils the sky, beneath it lie the deep, noiseless cushion of moss, the shrubs and plants that the old wood rangers knew and the moose browsed on, and the tangled trunks of fallen trees. You almost fancy that you hear the long-ago silenced voices of the woods, so vividly does this wild spirit for an instant conjure up a vision of the old wild world whereof he is a survival. Acquaintance with civilized man has not tamed him, but has made him the wilder. He deigns to feed upon apple-tree buds and buckwheat and woodside clover, not as a gift, but a begrudged compensation for what you have taken from him, and gives you therefor not even the thanks of familiarity; and notwithstanding his acquaintance with generations of your race he will not suffer you to come so near to him as he would your grandfather. If, when the leaves are falling, you find him in your barnyard, garden, or out-house, or on the porch, do not think he has any intention of associating with you or your plebeian poultry. You can only wonder where he found refuge from the painted shower when all his world was wooded. If he invites your attendance at his drum solo, it is only to fool you with the sight of an empty stage, for you must be as stealthy and keen-eyed as a lynx to see his proud display of distended ruff and wide spread of barred tail and accelerated beat of wings that mimic thunder, or see even the leafy curtain of his stage flutter in the wind of his swift exit. How the definite recognition of his motionless form evades you, so perfectly are his colors merged into those of his environment, whether it be in the flush greenness of summer, the painted hues of autumn or its later faded dun and gray, or in the whiteness of winter. Among one or the other he is but a clot of dead leaves, a knot upon a branch, the gray stump of a sapling protruding from the snow, or, covered deep in the unmarked whiteness, he bursts from it like a mine exploded at your feet, leaving you agape till he has vanished from your sight and your ears have caught the last flick of his wings against the dry branches.