XXXIII. 



THE ORIGIN OF GROUSE. 



A HAMPER of grouse from a friend in Scotland lias a 

 double interest, biological and culinary. I shall hand 

 over the four even brace to the cook for further opera- 

 tions ; and I shall dissect the odd bird as an ornithologi- 

 cal study. The common red grouse of the Scotch moors 

 indeed may be considered in one particular as the most 

 interesting living group of British birds. They form at 

 present the only species of higher vertebrates entirely 

 peculiar to these islands. We have, it is true, several 

 local species of British trout, found only in certain small 

 pools or mountain tarns of Wales, Scotland, or Ireland ; 

 but beside the red grouse we have no indigenous bird, 

 mammal, reptile, or amphibian wholly peculiar to our 

 own country. This fact gives a very singular interest to 

 the grouse, and naturally suggests the question, whence 

 did it come to us ? 



As a whole, there can be no doubt that the mass of 

 our existing British fauna and flora is North European, 

 and that it reached our shores in the interval between the 

 last glacial period and the final insulation of Great Brit- 

 ain and Ireland. It is now universally acknowledged by 

 biologists and geologists that after the great ice-sheet 

 finally cleared off the face of England, our islands 

 formed for some considerable time an outlying penin- 

 sula of the European continent, like Spain or Scandina- 

 via at the present day ; and over the broad bridge of 

 land which then occupied the bed of the German Ocean 



