GAME BIRDS OF WOLMER FOREST. 13 



Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood of 

 a paler colour and softer nature, which the inhabitants called 

 fir ; but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could dis- 

 cover nothing resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose 

 that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic 

 tree. 



This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of 

 wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed 

 there in the summer ; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, 

 as I have discovered within these few years, teals. Partridges 

 in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on the verge of this fo- 

 rest, into which they love to make excursions ; and in particular, 

 in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they 

 swarmed to such a degree, that parties of unreasonable sports- 

 men killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day 



But there was a nobler species of 

 game in this forest, now extinct, 

 which I have heard old people say 

 abounded much before shooting fly- 

 ing became so common, and |that was 

 the heath-cock, black game, or grouse. 

 When I was a little boy I recollect 

 one coming now and then to my 

 father's table. The last pack re- Black Grousu - 



membered was killed about thirty-five years ago; and within 

 these ten years one solitary grey hen was sprung by some beagles 

 in beating for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, " A hen phea- 

 sant ;" but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in 

 the north of England, assured me that it was a grey hen.* 



more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops 

 of walls." See Hales's Haemastatics, p. 360. Quere, Might not such observations be reduced to 

 domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about houses ; and 

 in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding of pavements, baths, and graves, and other hidden 

 relics of curious antiquity ? 



* This fine species, the tetrao tetrix or black grouse, inhabits every where Jess elevated situa- 

 tions than the other British species which by sportsmen are termed grouse, .being found, 

 though at present nowhere very plentifully, in the south of England, wherever there are heathy 

 wilds of sufficient extent, intermingled here and there with coppice, or brushwood, and patches of 

 boggy ground. They occur sparingly upon the Devonshire moors and other heathy districts in 

 the western counties, also, rather more abundantly, in the New-forest, Hants., and now and then 

 a solitary individual may be flushed on the extensive moorland range of Hounslow and Bagshot; 

 but their principal localities lie more to the north, upon the lower slopes of heathy and moun- 

 tainous regions, which are covered with a natural growth of willow, birch, and alder, and inter- 

 sected by morasses, clothed with coarse herbage, also the deep and wooded dells which so com- 

 monly occur in the valleys between the mountains. They subsist (all the poultry tribes being 

 nearly omnivorous) on various kinds of food, according to the season, as insects, the different 



