236 GALLIFORMES CHAP. 
choosing some horizontal bough or convenient spot of ground 
whereon to display himself with drooping wings, expanded tail, 
and inflated air-sacs. - Rarely can an observer gain a view, so 
misleading is the ventriloquistic effect of the sound. The nest, 
commonly placed beneath a branch or near a tussock, is a mere 
depression in the soil lined with herbage, leaves, or fir-needles. 
The eight to twelve eggs are creamy-buff, with round brown dots. 
Canachites (Canace) canadensis, the Canada Grouse or “ Spruce- 
Partridge,” found from Alaska and British America to the north- 
eastern United States, is black, with lead-coloured bars above, and 
a white pectoral band below, the tail having a chestnut tip, which 
is wanting in the browner C. franklini of the north-western 
Rocky Mountains. In the female the grey is chiefly replaced by 
orange. It is a tame species, and flies but a short distance before 
alighting on some tree. The food consists of “spruce” buds and 
larch needles, with berries of Vaccinium (bilberry, cranberry, 
etc.), Empetrum (crowberry), and so forth. It is not polygamous ; 
but a most curious account of the cock’s habits of showing off 
and drumming is given by Bendire.t The hen constructs a nest 
of dry moss, leaves, and twigs upon the ground, under shelter of 
some overhanging bough, and lays from eight to eighteen reddish- 
buff eggs with brown spots. Falcipennis hartlaubi, a very similar 
species, distinguished by slender sickle-shaped outer primaries, 
occurs in North-East Siberia, Kamtschatka, and Saghalien. 
Tetrao urogallus, the Capercaillie, apparently not uncommon in 
Scotland until 1770, and exterminated in Ireland about the same 
date, was reintroduced at Taymouth Park, Perthshire, in 1838, 
and is now fairly plentiful in Central North Britain. Failure has 
attended similar attempts in Ireland. The discoveries of bones 
in Teesdale and near Torquay shew that this bird’s range once 
extended to Yorkshire and Devonshire, while similar finds have 
been made in Aquitaine and Denmark. At the present day it 
inhabits sub-alpine pine-forests from Scandinavia, the Pyrenees, 
North Italy, and Greece to Lake Baikal and the Altai Mountains, 
being represented in the Urals by a sub-species, 7. wralensis. The 
male is almost entirely blackish-grey above, with somewhat 
darker tail, and black below with greenish chest. The female is 
smaller, and is mottled with brown, buff, black, and white, merging 
into rufous on the breast, which is barred with black. A variable 
| Life Histories of N. Amer. Birds, Special Bull. i. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1892, pp. 52-56. 
