4 STERILE HENS. 



Sw.), which sissume in great measure llie plumage of 

 tlie young male, together with its thick, crooked, and 

 white beak, and its longer tail ; hut they are always readily 

 distinguishable by their inferior size. 



" Their sterility," says Nilsson, when speaking of the 

 birds in question, " is not always a consequence of old 

 a2-e ; for those that I have dissected were iu their first 

 year, but in all of them the ovary and the oviduct were in 

 a diseased state and more or less destroyed. The younger 

 they were," the Professor proceeds to say, " the less they 

 resembled the male, and the older the closer resemblance 

 they bore to him." 



The chosen haunts of the Capercali are mountainous 

 and hilly districts, where Barr-Skogar, or pine woods, 

 abound, particularly such as are of mature growtli and 

 studded with lakes and morasses. Sometimes, however, 

 it is met with in woods interspersed with deciduous ti-ees 

 {L(jf-Skogar), move especially the oak; as it feeds freely 

 on acorns. Excepting in the autumn, and when the 

 young are small and follow their mother, these birds are 

 seldom seen in brushwood or even in woods of young 

 grow'th, and then only when in the vicinity of great woods. 



During the summer, the food of the Capercali consists 

 chiefly of several kinds of jjlants, ferns, and buds of certain 

 trees and bushes, such as the alder, birch, and hazel; of 

 acorns, where procurable ; of almost all sorts of berries 

 found in the northern forests, as, for example, the 

 cranberry [O.vijcoccus jxilxstris, Pers. ; T'acciiiinin oxycoc- 

 cos, Linn.), the red whortleberry, or cowberry* ( Vaccinhim 



■'■ The berry of this plant, which in the London market often goes 

 under the erroneous name of Cranberry, is not of so fine a flavour, wlien 

 j)roseri-ed, as the latter; but, owing to being less acid, it is preferred by thrifty 

 housewives in Sweden, as requiring a smaller quantity of sugar. Recently 

 I sent a good many living specimens of the Cranberry to Sir Thomas Maryon 

 Wilson, which are now flourishing at his seat, Charlton House, in Kent. 



