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Tisdale was telling the ptarmigan yarn it's wonderful the power he has to hold the interest of a crowd of men and the chance was too good to miss. We stole on up the steps to the gallery, no one noticed us, and concealed ourselves behind that hanging Kodiak bearskin." "Incredible!" exclaimed Feversham. "But I see you arrived at the opportune moment, when Tisdale was talking.

They are sand-pipers, ptarmigan, squirrels, and occasionally a wild goose, shot, perhaps, in the act of flying over the hunter's head, as these birds are now often seen and heard going north. In the evening I see from my window the neighboring Eskimo children playing with their sleds, and sometimes they light a bonfire, shouting and chattering in their own unique way.

A black fox came toward him, carrying a ptarmigan in his mouth. The man shouted. It was a fearful cry, but the fox, leaping away in fright, did not drop the ptarmigan. Late in the afternoon he followed a stream, milky with lime, which ran through sparse patches of rush-grass. Grasping these rushes firmly near the root, he pulled up what resembled a young onion-sprout no larger than a shingle-nail.

The hunting-spear with which he had delighted to follow the flying roebuck from glade to glade, the arrows with which he used to bring down the heavy ptarmigan or the towering eagle, all were laid aside. Scottish liberty was no more; and Wallace would have blushed to have shown himself to the free-born deer of his native hills, in communion of sports with the spoilers of his country.

His principal food is derived from rabbits and any other animals he can kill, from beaver down, as well as grouse, ptarmigan, and other birds and fowl; occasionally he will tackle the young of deer, but he never dares to molest man. When his catch is more than sufficient for his present need, he caches the remainder in snow or earth for future use.

Some species migrate south on the approach of winter; while several, as the snowy owl, remain to prey upon the ptarmigan, the hares, and other small quadrupeds, who, like themselves, choose that dreary region for their winter home. Our travellers, as I have said, stood watching the owl as it soared silently through the heavens.

Like the ptarmigan and the weasel, the snowshoe rabbit changed to a white coat for winter. In the spring, he was bluish, though underneath he still retained his arctic snowiness. In the fall, with good taste and a sense of the fitness of things, he put on a tan coat, and then, as the winter snows began to drift, he once more donned his ermine robes.

During the other six months we lived principally upon game, such as venison, bear's meat, beaver, wild-cat, ptarmigan, rabbits and even muskrats. So, this request to bring out something to eat that savoured of civilisation, was not an unreasonable one.

Even now is he there in the snow. 'I said no word till I had cooked the ptarmigan. Then I spoke to her, in her own tongue, which she had not heard in many years. She straightened herself, so, and her eyes were wonder-wide, and she asked who I was, and where I had learned that speech. "I am Naass," I said. "You?" she said. "You?" And she crept close that she might look upon me.

Among birds, the ptarmigan, already mentioned, must be considered a remarkable case of special adaptation. The Duke of Argyll, in his "Reign of Law," has pointed out the admirable adaptation of the colours of the woodcock to its protection.