The Ptarmigan in Cumberland and Wales. 541 



in Hutchinson's ' History of Cumberland/ refers to both Pennant and 

 Latham, and says, " The Ptarmigan is become a very scarce bird in 

 Cumberland ; and I believe is nowhere to be found in this county, except 

 on the lofty mountains about Keswick." A statement which may have 

 been derived from the same source as Pennant's, or may be an adap- 

 tation, in slightly varied language, from the ' British Zoology ' ; and, 

 if Dr. Heysham spoke from independent observation, or enquiry, it is to 

 be regretted that he has furnished so little in addition to what was 

 already known. Whatever we may think of his testimony, so far as I 

 know, he only, after Pennant, can be quoted as a possibly independent 

 authority. 



Thenceforward most authors have been content to repeat the old 

 localities of Keswick and Wales,* or Cumberland and Wales, f varied, 

 in the language of Montagu (1802), as " Some few are yet found to the 

 south of the Tweed."! 



But, in 1825, Selby departs still further from the original statement, 

 when he writes: "According to Pennant and earlier writers, this 

 species seems, at one period, to have inhabited some of the mountainous 

 ridges of Cumberland and Westmoreland." Selby is the first to omit 

 Wales. 



A few years later, Sir W. Jardine, in his 'Game Birds' (1834), 

 says : " According to Pennant, and some contemporary writers, these 

 birds were found on the hills of Westmoreland and Cumberland ; and, 

 I believe, recollections now exist of a few having been seen upon the 

 high ranges which appear on the opposite border of Scotland. These 

 have been for some time extirpated, and unless a few solitary pairs 

 remain on Skiddaw, or some of its precipitous neighbours, the range of 

 the Grampians will be its most southern British station." The same 

 words are repeated in Jardine's ' Birds of Great Britain and Ireland,' 

 part iii. (1842); but I have not been able to discover who were these 

 earlier and contemporary writers, unless Latham, Walcott, Lewin, and 

 Heysham are intended, all of whom, with perhaps the exception of 

 Heysham, evidently copied from Pennant. 



Jenyns (1835) gives Cumberland and Westmoreland; Macgillivray 

 (1837) Wales and North England; and, lastly, Yarrell, in all three 

 -editions, still repeats Cumberland and Westmoreland, as former 

 localities for the Ptarmigan. 



* Graves, in his 'British Ornithology,' the first edition of which was published 

 in 1811, remarks that this bird "is rarely to be met with but on the high moun- 

 tainous parts of this country, on the highlands of Scotland, and on the hills of 

 Snowdon, in Wales ; they abound on all the heathy mountains in the north of 

 Westmoreland and Cumberland, and like the Grouse feed on most kinds of 

 mountain berries." ED. 



t Walcott 'Synopsis of British Birds' (1789) ; Donovan, 'Natural History 

 of British Birds ' (1794). 



+ Lewin, 'Birds of Great Britain,' vol. v. (1797); Bewick, 'History of 

 British Birds' (1797). 



