310 THE QUESTION OF ACCLIMATISATION. 
appear to have any well-defined ideas what they 
ought to do, and kept flying up and pitching 
down again, and were manifestly restless and 
excited—perhaps rejected suitors contemplating 
something desperate. The music to this eccen- 
tric dance was the loud ‘chuck-chuck’ continu- 
ously repeated, and the strange throbbing sound 
produced by the vibrating wings. I saw several 
balls after this, but in every one the same 
series of strange evolutions were carried out. 
In reference to this bird’s adaptability to accli- 
matisation in our own country, it appears to me 
to be most admirably fitted for our hill and 
moorland districts. It is very hardy, capable of 
bearing a temperature of 30° to 33° below zero; 
feeds on seeds, berries, and vegetable matter— 
in every particular analogous to what it could 
find in our own hill-country; a good breeder, 
having usually from twelve to fourteen young at 
a brood; nests early, and would come to shoot 
about the same time as our own grouse. Snow 
does not hurt them in the slightest degree; they 
burrow into it, and feed on what they can find 
underneath it. The two specimens in the British 
Museum I shot in the Colville valley; they are 
male and female, in winter plumage ; and anyone, 
who may feel an interest in getting these birds 
