A LATE season snowstorm, with the heavy precipitation that marked the storm of Feb. 28, gives the heart of the sportsman as well as that of the bird protector a touch of anxiety on the score of the ruffed grouse and quail. A downfall of that kind, followed by a thaw and then by a freeze at night, means the death of hundreds of game birds. The quail simply get starved and cold killed, while the ruffed grouse, or partridges, get locked up by Jack Frost and die of hunger in their prisons.

There is a patch of woods not far from Delavan, Wis., where there was until recently an abundance of these game birds. There was a local snowstorm there late in February last year, which was followed by a day of sunshine and then by a frost which covered the snow with a heavy crust. Grouse have a habit of escaping from the cold and blustering winds by burying themselves in the big snow drifts at the edges of the woods. There they lie snug and warm and are perhaps loath to leave their comfortable quarters. They sometimes stay in the drift until the delay costs them their lives, the crust forming and walling them in. It so happened to sixteen partridges in the woodland patch near Delavan. With the melting of the seasons snows the bodies of the birds were found. They were separated from one another by only a few feet. It was a veritable grouse graveyard. — Tribune.