discovered.

The nest is carelessly made of grasses and stout herbage, on the ground,
under the shelter of grass and bushes. There are from six to ten eggs
of yellowish gray, with spots of light brown. The young are fed first
upon insects, and afterwards on berries, grain, and the buds and shoots
of trees.

The Black Grouse is a wild and wary creature. The old male which has
survived a season or two is particularly shy and crafty, distrusting
both man and dog, and running away as soon as he is made aware of
approaching danger.

In the autumn the young males separate themselves from the other sex and
form a number of little bachelor establishments of their own, living
together in harmony until the next nesting season, when they all begin
to fall in love; "the apple of discord is thrown among them by the
charms of the hitherto repudiated sex, and their rivalries lead them
into determined and continual battles, which do not cease until the end
of the season restores them to peace and sobriety."

The coloring of the female is quite different from that of the male
Grouse. Her general color is brown, with a tinge of orange, barred with
black and speckled with the same hue, the spots and bars being larger on
the breast, back, and wings, and the feathers on the breast more or less
edged with white. The total length of the adult male is about twenty-two
inches, and that of the female from seventeen to eighteen inches. She
also weighs nearly one-third less than her mate, and is popularly termed
the Heath Hen.

THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO.

In this interesting family of birds are included seven species,
distributed throughout the tropics. Five species are American, of which
one reaches our southern border in Florida. Chapman says that they are
gregarious at all seasons, are rarely found far from the seacoasts, and
their favorite resorts are shallow bays or vast mud flats which are
flooded at high water. In feeding the bill is pressed downward into the
mud, its peculiar shape making the point turn upward. The ridges along
its sides serve as strainers through which are forced the sand and mud
taken in with the food.

The Flamingo is resident in the United States only in the vicinity of
Cape Sable, Florida, where flocks of sometimes a thousand of these rosy
vermillion creatures are seen. A wonderful sight indeed. Mr. D. P.
Ingraham spent more or less of his time for four seasons in the West
Indies among them. He states t