GALLINAL. ( 162 ) TETRAONID/E. 



THE BED GROUSE. 



MUIR-FOWL, MOOR-FOWL, MOOR-COCK, MOOR-HEN, GOR-COCK 

 RED GAME, RED PTARMIGAN. 



Lag opus scoticus. 



With earliest spring 



the Gor-cock's call 



Is heard from out the mist, high on the hill; 

 But not till when the tiny heather bud 

 Appears, are struck the spring-time leagues of love. 

 Remote from shepherd's hut, or trampled fold, 

 The new joined pair their lowly mansion pitch, 

 Perhaps beneath the juniper's rough shoots ; 

 Or castled on some plat of tufted heath, 

 Surrounded by a narrozv sable moat 

 Of swampy moss. 



GRAHAME, Birds of Scotland. 



ALTHOUGH the Ked Grouse is indigenous to Berwickshire, 

 the first notice of it which I can find with reference to 

 this county is in Godscroft's MS. History of the Homes of 

 Wedderburn, written in 1611, where that author, writing of 

 his brother, Sir George Home of Wedderburn, who was born 

 about 1550 and died in 1616, says: "He was very hand- 

 some and well-proportioned, and of great strength and swift 

 of foot. He was a keen hunter, and delighted in hawking. 

 He was so much given to that sport that he built a hunting 

 lodge, called Handaxe Wood, 1 in the Lammermuir Hills, in 

 which he often spent the night. He had Hawks called 



1 A locality in the neighbourhood of Byrecleugh. 



