240 GALLIFORMES CHAP. 
are similar to those of the last-named, but a preference is shewn 
for willow- and birch-scrub; shoots of these trees or of Vaccinium, 
with various moorland berries, furnishing the food. A perform- 
ance recalling the “lek” of the Capercaillie is said to be given 
by the male in spring, a fact also true of the succeeding species. 
L. mutus, the Ptarmigan or Fjeld-riporre, is in summer blackish- 
brown with grey and rufous markings, the median tail-feathers, 
abdomen, and most of the wings being white. The back becomes 
erey in autumn. ‘The female is reddish-buff, barred with black. 
In winter both sexes are white, with black and white rectrices, and 
. in the male with black lores. Nearly all the so-called Ptarmigan 
in English poulterers’ shops are Willow Grouse. The haunts 
are on the higher parts of mountain-ranges, where stony ground 
abounds, but somewhat lower altitudes are sought after the 
breeding season. The food consists of shoots and berries ; the cry 
is croaking, and best heard in misty weather. From five to ten 
eggs, with blacker markings than those of Red Grouse, are deposited 
in a hole scraped in the earth, with little or no lining, the nest 
being commonly quite exposed, though equally often under shelter 
of a boulder. Ptarmigan are decidedly difficult to see among the 
similarly-coloured stones. In Scotland they occur on most of the 
higher hills from Arran northwards, though no longer in Dum- 
fries and Galloway ; while abroad they occupy Northern Europe, 
with the Pyrenees and the Alps, and possibly Northern Asia. In 
the lighter Z. rupestris the adult male never has a black breast 
or a grey back in autumn. This form occurs in North Asia and 
North America, with Greenland, Iceland, and Japan, many local 
races having been described as distinct species or sub-species ; 
while the larger L. hyperboreus (hemileucurus), with a white base 
to the tail, inhabits Spitsbergen; and Z. lewewrus, with entirely 
white rectrices—the smallest member of the genus—ranges along 
the Rocky Mountains from British Columbia to New Mexico. 
Of fossil forms Coturnix and Palaeortyx occur in the 
Upper Eocene of the Paris Basin, Taoperdiz in the calcareous 
deposits of Languedoc of the same age; Palaeortyx 1s again 
found with three species of Palaeoperdiz, in the Middle 
Miocene of France, while Phasianus is not only recorded from 
1 Cf. Elliot, Monograph of the Tetraonidae, New York, 1872; Dresser, Birds of 
Europe, vii. 1871-81, p. 187. To these books and those mentioned in the note on 
p- 237, the reader must be referred for fuller details regarding the Tetraoninae. 
