The Ruffed Grouse usually flies in a perfectly right line, so that if you flush one without getting a shot, and can preserve his line exactly, you may find him, if he have not treed, which it is ten to one he has; wherefore I advise you not to follow him. The exception to this right line of flight, is when the ground is broken into ridges with parallel ravines, in which case the bird, on crossing a ridge at right angles, will rarely cross the ravine also, but will dive up or down, as the covert may invite.
When birds lie in narrow ravines, filled with good covert, by throwing the guns forward on the brow of the ridges a hundred yards ahead of the dogs, which must be left behind with a person to hunt and restrain them, and letting the sportsmen carefully keep that distance in advance, going very gingerly and silently, sport may be had; and so I think only—especially over slow, mute, cocking spaniels, for as the birds, after running before the dogs, will be likely to take wing abreast of, or perhaps even behind the unexpected shooter, who has thus stolen a march on them, and as they rarely, if ever, cross the ridges, but fly straight along the gorge, they so afford fair shots.
For my own part, I do not consider it worth the while, as the law now stands, to go out in pursuit of Ruffed Grouse with dogs, where you expect to find no other species of game; for, in the first place, they ramble so widely, that there is no certainty of finding them within ten miles of the spot where you may have seen them daily for a month; and, secondly, if you do find them, there is no certainty of having sport with them, but rather a probability of reverse. As an adjunct to other kinds of shooting they are excellent, but as sole objects of pursuit, I think, worthless. I have often blundered on them by chance while hunting for other game; but when I have gone out expressly in pursuit of them, I have never had even tolerable sport.
If the law were altered, and September shooting permitted, the case would be altered also; and in many regions of our country, as the Kaatskill Mountains, and some parts of Columbia and Saratoga counties, in New York; the Pocono Mountains, and the Blue Ridge, generally, in Pennsylvania; and many districts of Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, rare sport might be had. For September shooting, No. 8 shot will be found sufficient; but after that, No. 7; and very late in the season, Eley’s wire cartridges will be found the most effective.
This widely extended bird is too well known to require any peculiar description; and I shall content myself with observing, in aid of my portraiture of the Ruffed Grouse, that the upper part of its head and hind neck are reddish-brown, the back rich chestnut, mottled with heart-shaped spots of white, edged with black. The tail is bright reddish-yellow, barred and speckled with black, and bordered by a broad, black belt between two narrow white bands, one at the extremity of the tail. The iris of the eye hazel, bill brown, feet brownish gray. Loral band cream color. Throat and fore neck, brownish-yellow. Upper ruff-feathers barred with brown. Wings brownish-red, streaked with black. Breast and abdomen cream colored, closely barred above, and laterally spotted below, with dark chocolate. Length 18 inches, spread of wings 2 feet. The Ruffed Grouse is a capital bird on the table. The breast white meat, back and thighs brown. It should be roasted quickly, eaten with bread sauce and fried crumbs, and washed down with sherry or red wine.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
Astræa; The Balance of Delusions. A Poem Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, Aug 14, 1850. By Oliver Wendall Holmes. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.
Few college poems have attained, at the period of their delivery, so fluttering a fame as did this last product of Dr. Holmes’s forgetive and flashing brain; and it is now published “by request of the Society,” and demand of the public. Though it has not the geniality of “Urania,” nor its sustained sweetness and subtility of sentiment, it is the greatest of the author’s long poems in decision and depth both of feeling and satire, and exhibits, perhaps, more than his usual command of the powers and delicacies of expression. The verse is a study for all heroic rhymers, being fully equal to all the purposes of wit, fancy, imagination and passion, and combining the utmost finish in separate lines with a bounding movement in the whole. The poem is a succession of beautiful pictures, grave and mirthful, each of which symbolizes some powerful thought or tender feeling, and some of which are hardly matched in our poetry for brilliancy of effect. The satire is less frolicksome than usual; here and there, indeed, its sting draws blood; and the whole poem is conceived and executed in a sterner and more earnest spirit than is common with Dr. Holmes.
The opening paragraphs contain a most beautiful and delicate tribute to the author’s father, who was educated at Yale. The following lines refer, we suppose, to Dr. Stiles, the president of the college at the time the elder Holmes was a student, and contain an exquisite picture of the filial relations of master and pupil: