542 Alexander Goodman More Scientific Papers. 



Thus, for more than a hundred years, we find Pennant's original 

 station of Keswick continually quoted, and this apparently without any 

 confirmation, or fresh enquiries; and the range has been even extended, 

 so as to include Westmoreland. We have Wales repeated up to 1837 

 although Latham is the sole and unsupported authority for the state- 

 ment ; and we are led to conclude, from the silence of Pennant, and 

 the want of any corroboration since the time of Latham, together with 

 the omission of Wales by many of our best authorities, that Latham 

 unconsciously added Wales, in the belief that he had quoted it from 

 Pennant, who was so well known as an authority concerning his own 

 country. 



Dismissing Wales, then, as probably a misquotation, I believe I 

 am now able to offer a possible explanation of the Keswick locality, 

 through the assistance of my friend Mr. W. K. Dover. 



Mr. Dover, himself residing at Keswick, has kindly instituted 

 enquiries on the spot, and he tells me that there is, even now, a 

 "white" or white-mottled variety of the Red Grouse, known to fre- 

 quent Skiddaw Forest. His friends have there met with a few "highly 

 white-mottled Grouse," which the gamekeeper had also observed for 

 several years, and Mr. Dover himself has seen and shot upon Skiddaw 

 some Grouse, " with plumage much mixed with white, and with their 

 legs deeply feathered, white to the toes, so as to give them a whitish 

 mottled appearance when seen upon the open at a little distance.'* 

 Again, in a more recent letter, he tells me that a few years ago a party, 

 when shooting Grouse upon Shap Fells, in Westmoreland, met with 

 two or three birds which were so white that two Scotch gamekeepers 

 who were present called them Ptarmigan ; and these birds both Mr. 

 Dover and his informant believe were white -mottled Grouse. So far, 

 Mr. Dover has not succeeded in finding any tradition of the former 

 existence of the Ptarmigan in the Lake District. 



Hence, I think, we may assume that Pennant and Heysham (if the 

 latter did not quote Pennant) may have derived their knowledge from 

 the same informant, who, in the careless way in which Natural History 

 was then studied, is very likely to have merely reported the existence, 

 in small numbers, of a white or white-mottled Grouse upon the 

 mountains near Keswick ; and the Ptarmigan having, at that time, 

 only lately been included in the British fauna, any "white " or " white- 

 mottled " Grouse would be identified with it. 



I conclude, accordingly, that it was some white or whitish variety 

 of the Red Grouse, and not the Ptarmigan, which used, in the time of 

 Pennant, to frequent, as it does still, the lofty hills near Keswick. 



