All things considered, the ruffed grouse--the "partridge" of the North and "pheasant" of the South--is entitled to rank first among feathered game. Nothing swifter or more valiant in plumage tests the sportsman's nerve and skill. So far as sport is concerned, he may be placed, from his alertness, swiftness, and the trying nature of his usual habitat, on a par with the trout of the clear Hampshire chalk-streams, whose fastidiousness in rising to the artificial fly so taxes the angler's resources on the placid reaches of the Itchen, the Anton, and the Test. He is preëminently the bird of the woodlands, supreme in his sturdiness and his strength. His roll-call awakens the wind-flower, and his thunderous _whir!_ fans the September air into freshness. He blends with the buffs of the beech and russets of the oak, and is eloquent with the lustihood of the ripened year. And how artfully he assimilates with the shadows and thrusts a tree-trunk between himself and the gunner! See him as he springs from the tangle of the saplings, a shaft of mottled splendour where the sunlight strikes his sides; and the hoarse boom of the double-barrel fails to check his tumultuous flight. Behold him in the spring while he struts upon his chosen log with extended tufts and expanded feathers, beating the air with his wings, and sounding his reverberating peal of defiance and of love. Consider him amid the rigours of the frost, loyal to his native haunts, true to the instincts of his race, when most of his companions have deserted him for more congenial climes. Observe him once more when the deadly volley has stopped his career, and he falls upon the russet carpet, in glossy black ruff, and plumage in blended hues of olive, brown, black, and grey--the noblest game-bird that treads the forest aisles! [Illustration: PARTRIDGE SHOOTING, I. LA CHASSE AUX PERDRIX From the coloured print after Howitt, 1807] And if no other member of his family requires more address in bringing to bag, none may surpass, if equal, him in his wild woodland flavour. His back is the very incarnation of poignancy, while no bird that flies can vie with the whiteness and plumpness of his breast. This is saying nothing against the prairie-chicken in his younger stage, or the eastern quail, or even the two long-billed beauties beloved by the sportsman and the epicure. But the assertion may be safely ventured that he will lend himself to more varieties of wine in evolving their _sève_ than any other representative of the haunts of Pan. _Bonasa umbellus!_ may birch-bud and beech-nut, wintergreen and partridge-vine, never fail thee in snow and storm!