GREY PTARMIGAN. 207 



introduces a large quantity at a time, like a ruminating quad- 

 ruped, and gradually digests it while reposing. In feeding, it 

 walks about among the shrubs and herbage, where it is little 

 liable to be interrupted, so that it has time to select fragments 

 of the proper size and quality. The food is collected in the 

 crop, gradually pounded in the gizzard, where it is mixed with 

 the solvent juice of the proventriculus, farther diluted in the 

 duodenum, and deposits the chyle along the intestine, whence 

 it is carried off by the lacteals. As, perhaps on account of 

 its being less nutritious than animal or farinaceous matter, 

 it requires to pass rapidly along, the parts that have not 

 been assimilated undergo a further elaboration and absorp- 

 tion in the very large coeca, which are ajDpendages to the 

 intestine, performing the same office as they, but into which 

 the coarser fibres do not enter, being carried directly into the 

 rectum. 



Early in spring the Ptarmigans separate and pair. The nesl; 

 is a slight hollow, scantily slrewn with a few twigs and stalks or 

 blades of grass. The eggs are of a regular oval form, about an 

 inch and seven twelfths in length, an inch and from one to two 

 twelfths across, of a white, yellowish- white, or reddish colour, 

 blotched and spotted with dark brown, the markings larger than 

 those of the Brown Ptarmigan. The young run about imme- 

 diately after leaving the shell, and from the commencement are 

 so nimble and expert at concealing themselves, that a person who 

 has accidentally fallen in with a flock very seldom succeeds in 

 capturing one. On the summit of one of the Harris mountains, 

 I once happened to stroll into the midst of a covey of very 

 young Ptarmigans, which instantly scattered, and in a few 

 seconds disappeared among the stones, while the mother ran 

 about within a few yards of me, manifesting the most intense 

 anxiety, and pretending to be unable to fly. She succeeded so 

 eifectually in drawing my attention to herself, that when I at 

 length began to search for the young, not one of them could be 

 found, although the place was so bare that one might have 

 suj)posed it impossible for them to escape detection. It seems 

 wonderful, after all, how a young bird, such as a Lapwing or 

 Snipe, sitting motionless on the ground, which it always does, 



