CAPERCALLY 73 
as writing in 1794 :—‘“ The last seen in Scotland was in the woods 
of Strathglass about thirty-two years ago.”! Of its existence in 
Ireland we have scarcely more details. If we may credit the 
Pavones sylvestres of Giraldus Cambrensis with being of this species, 
it was once abundant there, and Willughby (1678) was told that it 
was known in that kingdom as the “ Cock-of-the-wood.” A few 
other writers mention it by the same name, and Rutty, in 1772, 
says (Nat. Hist. Dublin, i. p. 302) that ‘one was seen in the county 
of Leitrim about the year 1710, but they have entirely disappeared 
of late, by reason of the destruction of our woods.” Pennant also 
states that about 1760 a few were to be found about Thomastown 
in Tipperary, but no later evidence is forthcoming, and thus it 
would seem that the species was exterminated at nearly the same 
period both in Ireland and Scotland. 
That the Cock-of-the-wood once inhabited England is a dis- 
covery of recent date. It is stated in The Zoologist for 1879 (p. 468) 
that its bones had been found among Roman remains at Settle 
in Yorkshire, though the authority for their determination is not 
given; but the present writer had the pleasure of receiving from 
Mr. James Backhouse a considerable number of its bones, some of 
them unmistakable, found by him in caves that he was investigating 
in Teesdale, and of confirming the conclusion at which he had 
already arrived. The remains were those of both sexes, and were 
sufficiently numerous to shew that the species had been common in 
the neighbourhood, and had contributed not a little to the food of 
the people who in a prehistoric age used the caves as dwellings. 
When the practice of planting was introduced, the restoration 
of this fine bird to both countries was attempted. In Ireland the 
trial, of which some particulars are given by Thompson (B. Ireland, 
ii. p. 32), was made at Glengariff, but it seems to have utterly 
failed, whereas in Scotland, where it was begun in earnest at Tay- 
mouth in 1838, it finally succeeded, and the species is now not 
_ only firmly established, but has vastly increased in numbers and 
range. Lloyd, the well-known author of several excellent works 
on the wild sports and natural history of Scandinavia, supplied the 
stock from Sweden, but it must be always borne in mind that the 
original British race was wholly extinct, and no recent remains of 
it are known to exist in any museum. 
This species is widely, though intermittently, distributed on the 
continent of Europe, from Lapland to the northern parts of Spain, 
Italy, and Greece, but is always restricted to pine-forests, which 
1 Yet Stephens in his continuation of Shaw’s General Zoology (ix. p. 268), 
writing in 1819, says that Montagu was present “when one was killed near the 
upper end of Loch Lomond about thirty-five years since.” This would mean that 
the species survived until about 1784, but the incident is not mentioned by 
Montagu in his own work, and the assertion may be doubted. 
