CHAPTER XX. 



A FEW KEMAKKS ON HYBRIDISM. 



On first arrival and establishment of the Capercaillie at a 

 new locality in an entirely new district, where black game are 

 abundant or fairly plentiful, cases of hybridism are not unusual. 

 If females arrive first — as we have shown they do — in a district 

 populated by black game, the absence of their natural partners 

 will induce coition with black game, and will result in 

 hybrids. If the male Capercaillies are long of arriving, this 

 hybridism will increase in frequency. But when their own 

 lords at last make their advent, the hens undoubtedly, for the 

 most part, return to their allegiance, and hybridism becomes 

 rarer, though it may not altogether die out. But, as we have 

 already seen, the males usually do arrive very shortly after 

 the females — a scarcity of female birds at the centre, caused 

 by the overflow, doubtless inducing the males to follow. 

 Only in unusual cases of isolation, or unusual distance from 

 the centre, do the males fail to find out the hens. Thus it 

 is only rarely that hybridism attains to serious proportions. 

 As the exceptions often prove the rule, I will instance a few 

 statistics chosen from amongst a number of others. 



At Logiealmond, Perthshire, two hybrids were shot in 

 1852, the first obtained there. Also a hybrid was shot at 

 Alyth, in the east of the same county, in 1857. At Tulliallan 

 the first bird ever seen there was a hybrid in 1854. These 



