BLACK GROUSE. 61 



Newton's researches that the earliest record of its employ- 

 ment is with reference to the present species. " It first 

 seems to occur (fide 0. Salusbury Brereton, Archceologia, iii. 

 p. 157) as ' grows ' in an ordinance for the regulation of 

 the royal household dated ' apud Eltham, mens. Jan. 22, 

 Hen. VIII.,' i.e., 1531, and, considering the locality, must 

 refer to Black game. It is found in an Act of Parliament 

 i. Jac. L, cap. 27, 2, i.e. 1603, and as reprinted in the 

 Statutes at Large, stands as now commonly spelt, but by 

 many writers or printers the final e is now omitted. In 

 1611 Cotgrave had ' Poule griesche. A Moore-henne ; the 

 henne of the Grice [in ed. 1673 ' Griece '] or Mooregame 

 (Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, sub voce 

 Poule}. The most likely derivation seems to be from the old 

 French w r ord Griesche, GreocJie, or Griais (meaning speckled, 

 and cognate with Griseus, grisly or grey), which was applied 

 to some kind of Partridge."* Members of this species are 

 now generally known collectively as Black game, and in 

 Devon and Somerset as Heath-poults ; the sexes being dis- 

 tinguished as the Black-cock and the Grey-hen. 



The increase of population, the enclosure of wastes, and 

 the drainage of boggy lands, have combined to curtail the 

 area over which the Black Grouse formerly roamed in the 

 south of England, and neither Elthain once a favourite 

 resort of Plantagenet and Tudor sovereigns nor any other 

 part of Kent can now shew any indigenous birds. In 

 Surrey in consequence, it is said, of reintroduction early 

 in the present century Black Grouse are found about Leith 

 Hill, and in the neighbourhood of Guildford ; and also in 

 Wolmer Forest, where the species had become extinct in 

 the time of Gilbert White ; but having been reint reduced 

 after the planting of the woods by Sir Charles Taylor, then 

 ranger of the forest, they throve exceedingly well. The 

 parents of the present race came from Cumberland, and in 

 1872 an old man who brought the birds to Wolmer was 

 still living at Liphook.f Descendants of these birds have 



* Encycl. Brit. Ed. 9, xi. p. 221, note. 



t H. W. Feilden, 'The Field,' March 30th, 1872 (p. 286). 



