RED GROUSE. 369 



mentions one instance of this bird being found at a dis- 

 tance from the moors. This was a female, taken alive near 

 Wedhampton, in Wiltshire, in the winter of 1794; the 

 occurrence was communicated to him by Edward Poore, 

 Esq., who showed him part of the bird. " By what unac- 

 countable accident," Montagu observes, " it should have 

 been driven to so great a distance from its native moors is 

 difficult to be assigned, as the nearest place they are known 

 to inhabit is the south of Wales ; a distance, in a straight 

 line, not less than sixty miles." 



The Red Grouse, like the Capercaillie and the Black 

 Grouse, will live and breed in confinement, and some that 

 I have seen have become remarkably tame. 



Daniel mentions that they " had been known to breed 

 in the menagerie of the late Duchess dowager of Portland, 

 and that this was in some measure effected by her Grace's 

 causing fresh pots of ling or heath to be placed in the 

 menagerie almost every day. At Mr. Grierson's, Rath- 

 farnham House, county of Dublin, in the season of 1802, 

 a brace of Grouse, which had been kept for three years, 

 hatched a brood of young ones. In 1809, Mr. William 

 Routledge, of Oakshaw, in Bewcastle, Cumberland, had in 

 his possession a pair of Red Grouse, completely domesti- 

 cated ; and which had so far forgotten their natural food, 

 as to prefer corn and crumbs of bread, to the tops and 

 seeds of heath. The hen laid twelve eggs, but from some 

 cause was not suffered to hatch them ; or, in all proba- 

 bility, the young brood would have been equally as tame 

 as their parents." 



In 1811, a pair of Red Grouse bred in the aviary at 

 Knowsley ; the female laid ten eggs, and hatched out eight 

 young birds ; but these, from some unknown cause, did not 

 live many days. The late Earl Derby, then Lord Stanley, 

 also communicated to Colonel Montagu the occurrence of a 



VOL. II. B B 



