326 TETRAONID.E. 



motlier, neither would my compassion for the mother allow 

 me long to detain her offspring, which I restored to her in 

 safety." — (Vol. i. p. 291.) The mode of catching the Ptarmi- 

 gan is thus described at page 319 : — " They take a little forked 

 birch twig, about a span long, which is stuck into the snow 

 perpendicularly by its divided end, forming a sort of arch. 

 A snare, or noose, made of packthread or horsehair, is then 

 fixed to the twig by one end, and placed in the open space 

 between the forks. The thin curling bark of the twig, being 

 carefully slit down at the outer side, curls inward, and serves 

 both to confine and conceal the snare, by drawing it close to 

 the branch on the inner side. Such traps as these are ranged 

 in a line, about a fathom from each other, in the birch 

 thickets, brushwood being laid from one to another, so as to 

 form a low fence. Now as the Ptarmigans come running along, 

 for they seldom fly, they have no way to go but through 

 these snares, and forty or fifty of them are frequently caught 

 at a time." Whether this precise mode is still practised, I 

 am unable to state, but I have more than once found the hair 

 noose round the neck of Norway Ptarmigan in the London 

 market, and others have done the same. T. M. Grant, Esq. 

 of Edinburgh, who has been in Norway, and has supplied me 

 with many interesting notes, says the Ptarmigan are all taken 

 in snares made of horsehair, set, he believes, amongst the 

 twigs of a skreen of bushes, erected above the surface of the 

 snow. Mr. Lloyd says, one peasant will set from five hun- 

 dred to a thousand of these snares. This is done in the 

 winter season ; the birds are kept in a frozen state until the 

 arrival of the dealers who make it a trade to purchase up 

 game : a single dealer will sometimes purchase and dispose 

 of fifty thousand Ptarmigan in the course of the season. Sir 

 Arthur de Capell Brooke calculated that, in one large parish 

 in Lapland, sixty thousand birds were killed in one winter. 

 Mr. Grant says, I was assured, when in Norway, that the 



