THE BLACK GROUSE. 109 



length is one foot six inches. The head and neck are 

 marked with alternate bars of red and black, the breast 

 with dusky black and white. The back covers of the 

 wings and tail are of the same colour as the neck, but 

 the red is deeper. The tail is slightly forked ; it consists 

 of eighteen feathers, variegated with red and black. 

 The feathers under the tail are white, marked with a 

 few bars of black and orange. 



This bird hatches its }" cfung rather late in the summer. 

 It lays from four to eight eggs, of a dull yellowish-white 

 colour, marked with numbers of very small ferruginous 

 specks. The black cock was formerly considerably 

 more numerous than at jjresent in the New Forest, and 

 was then strictly preserved as Tojal game. When the 

 Chief Justice in Eyre grants his warrrant to persons to 

 kill game in the Forest, the red and fallow deer and 

 the black game are excepted. The Marquis of Anglesea 

 has the wild and heathy part of his estate of Beau- 

 desert, well stocked with black game. The first old 

 black cock I ever shot was in Sussex, not more than 

 five and thirty miles from London, and I really derived 

 as much pleasure at looking at this fine sj)ecimen of 

 game as I had felt when, a young sportsman, I shot 

 my first partridge. In August 1820, I went with a 

 gentleman, a friend of mine, who was a land agent, into 

 Sussex, to the late Lord Somerville's, who had a con- 

 siderable estate in that country, where the black game 

 was preserved.* The tracts which come under the 



* It is quite iaipossible to preserve black game unless you have a 

 large and wild extent of country. This was in some degree the situation 

 of this part of Sussex in 1820. The large tracts of ground that are now 

 covered Avith gentlemens gi'ounds and farm-houses, and fields now under 

 cixltiyation, were then -wild heath covered plains, and afforded a safe 



