374 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



numbers, the difficulty must arise of finding fresh 



breeding grounds for tlie young birds, free from all 



*' taint," so fruitful a source of disease, and affording 



the necessary amount of insect food. The latter, I 



suspect, in many of our over-stocked coverts must 

 be already scarce, if not wanting altogether in some 

 localities. 



TETRAO TETE-IX, Linnaeus. 



BLACK-GEOUSE. 



The Black-Grouse is a resident in Norfolk, though 

 entirely confined to one district in the neighbourhood 

 of Lynn, where alone the various attempts to naturalise 

 this species have proved successful, the birds either 

 dying in a natural way, or being killed off, beyond 

 the scope of their preserved boundaries, owing to the 

 want of a sufficiently extended range of wide open 

 country. In that neighbourhood, however, it seems 

 probable that this species has existed for a very long 

 period, fluctuating in numbers, but never wholly 

 extinct; and, of late years, they appear to have 

 increased considerably about Snettisham and Der- 

 singham, on the L'Estrange estate, and on property 

 of Mr. Hamond at Bawsey, and Leziate, in the same 

 neighbourhood, where an ample extent of wood and 

 heath, wild in the extreme, and but slightly preserved 

 for other game, has afforded the three most essential 

 conditions of space, food, and quiet. In this locality 

 several couple are annually killed during the shooting 

 season, and they are also found in the autumn at 

 Sandringham, on the estate of His Royal Highness the 

 Prince of Wales, though I am not sure that they also 

 breed there. Through some notes on rare Norfolk birds. 



