13 



Even now, April 20, a quantity of Grouse, Capercailzie, and 

 Black Game have just arrived here in very good condition. How 

 long they may have been killed I do not know, as I believe they 

 are collected together and kept frozen ; but the White Grouse 

 have not commenced to get their breeding plumage. The Black 

 Game, as usual, are to an accustomed eye a different race to our 

 own the cocks, as a rule, larger and darker coloured, and with 

 larger tails ; the hens invariably much darker than our British 

 examples, and the markings on the back in many much more 

 resembling the hen Capercailzie. Norway is a totally different 

 country to this, and the ground over which the game is bred is 

 so unbounded in extent that in the breeding season, and after it, 

 the broods must be far more scattered and difficult to meet with 

 It is, I believe, in the winter the birds are driven towards the 

 villages by the snow, and at that time become useful to the 

 inhabitants. It will be a very long time yet, if it ever can be, 

 before the country is populated sufficiently to reduce the numbers 

 of the birds, even suppose all the gunners from Scotland and 

 England were put down in the country for a season or two. So 

 soon as the snow goes, the birds go back to the mountains again, 

 and then it would not pay to follow them, even to send them to 

 the English market. 



Migratory birds being met with, either here or on the Conti- 

 nent, till the middle of April, and even very much later, should 

 not lead us to say they breed where they are seen, unless we have 

 positive facts to guide us. It is only at this time our ordinary 

 summer visitants, as the Swallows and Warblers, arrive here. 

 Now most of the same species go very much further north on the 

 Continent, and, as with the other breeding birds, if they went too 

 far north too early they would be starved. Many of the birds 

 we see here till even June are only taking their part in the exten- 

 sive vernal migration northward, which prevails all round the 

 world, and in which a far greater number of our species take 

 part than is generally supposed; and the further north we go, 

 the later the arrival of the several species will be which intend 

 to make the north their summer home. 



CHABLES MTTEEAY ADAMSON. 



