320 



TETRAONID.E. 



assigned, as tlie nearest ])lace they arc known to inhabit is 

 the south of Wales ; a distance, in a straight line, not less 

 than sixty miles." 



The Red Grouse, like the Capercaillie and the Black 

 Grouse, will live and breed in confinement, and some that I 

 have seen have become remarkably tame. 



Daniel mentions that they " had been known to breed in 

 the menagerie of the late Duchess-dowager of Portland, and 

 that this was in some measure effected by her Grace's causing 

 fresh pots of ling or heath, to be placed in the menagerie 

 almost every day. At Mr. Grierson's, Rathfarnham House, 

 County of Dublin, in the season of 1802, a brace of Grouse, 

 which had been kept for three years, hatched a brood of young 

 ones. In 1809 Mr. William Routledge, of Oakshaw, in 

 Bewcastle, Cumberland, had in his possession a pair of Red 

 Grouse, completely domesticated ; and which had so far for- 

 gotten their natural food, as to prefer corn and crumbs of 

 bread, to the tops and seeds of heath. The hen laid twelve 

 eggs, but from some cause was not suffered to hatch them ; 

 or, in all probability, the young brood would have been 

 equally as tame as their parents." 



In 1811 a pair of Red Grouse bred in the aviary at 

 Knowsley ; the female laid ten eggs, and hatched out eight 

 young birds ; but these, from some unknown cause, did not 

 live many days. Earl Derby, then Lord Stanley, also com- 

 municated to Colonel Montagu the occurrence of a mottled 

 brown and white variety of the Red Grouse, very much re- 

 sembling the Ptarmigan when in its summer plumage, which 

 was shot in Lancashire in the month of August. 



A male bird of the year, killed in December, has the beak 

 black ; the irides hazel, with a crescentic page of vermilion 

 red skin over the eye, fringed at its upper free edge ; head 

 and neck reddish brown, but more rufous than any other part 

 of the bird ; back, wing, and tail-coverts, chestnut broAvn, 

 barred transversely and speckled Avith black ; distributed 



