BLACKGAME 83 



lias joined lier, is rather amusing. She very nearly gets 

 excited, but not quite. The young do not take to the 

 trees till they are two months old.^ 



Sometimes, when watching a pack of Blackcocks on 

 the hillside in late autumn, you will see a pair of them 

 dancing about and squaring up to each other for a minute 

 or two as if some transient recollections of their spring 

 battles were passing through their minds and were not 

 quite forgotten. They only do this on those still, warm 

 October evenings that are so frequent in Scotland.' 



Blackgame, though very difficult to rear in the earlier 

 stages of their existence, make excellent and amusing pets; 

 and one, a Blackcock, reared l)y a friend of mine, became 

 so tame as to be quite a nuisance. It would follow him 

 al)out the garden wherever he went, and ride on the top 

 of his hat, if allowed to ; neither did it betray the slightest 

 fear of strangers, or of beasts of any sort. Durino- the 

 spring its habits resembled those of the wild birds, without 

 the very necessary adjunct for fighting, namely, a foe ; 

 but this did not seem to distress it very much, as it would 

 content itself with imaginary ones. A violent death is 

 the usual end of interesting pets, and this poor creature's 

 end was no exception to the rule. One summer evening, 

 a strange gutter-bred mongrel, of an unsympathetic nature 

 and loose princij^les, got into my friend's garden by chance, 



1 It is interesting to notice the hereditary instinct of this species in 

 perching in trees. If a Greyhen with cliicks, no larger than Thrushes, be 

 flushed on the hillside and there are firs and spruces below, they invariably 

 end their flight on the summits of the trees, the young birds maintaining 

 their equilibrium at once, though never in a similar situation before. 



2 I see that Mr. Abel Chapman, in his charming book on Bird-life on 

 the Borders, calls this pseudo-erotism. 



