BLACK GEOTTSE. 193 



uncover their food. Sometimes in summer they make inroads 

 into the corn-fields, and devour barley and other grain, as 

 also insects and ants' eggs, with which the young are fed. 



The Black Cock in the spring, about the middle of March, 

 pairing going on then, and in April and May, utters a growling 

 kind of note, as well as a squeal or scream. 



The nest is placed not far from water, or in a marshy spot, 

 among heath, or in newly-made plantations, and sometimes 

 in hedgerows, generally under the shelter of some low 

 bush or among high grass, in some hollow, and is composed 

 inartificially, but neatly, of grass and a few twigs laid together. 



The ep;gs are from five to eight or ten in number, of a 

 pale yellowish red or yellowish white colour, irregularly 

 spotted and dotted with reddish brown. They are laid in 

 May. 



In the male the colours are a little lighter or deeper 

 according to the season. Weight, nearly four pounds; length 

 to the end of the side tail feathers, one foot ten or eleven 

 inches, or from that to two feet; bill, brownish black; iris, 

 dark brown, over it is a bare space of deep red, richest in 

 spring, and under it a white mark; the eyelids pale yellowish 

 brown, are thinly covered with very small feathers. Head, 

 crown, neck on the back and nape, deep glossy purple bluish 

 black; chin, throat, and breast, brownish black, on the lower 

 part the feathers tipped with white; back, deep glossy purple 

 bluish black. 



The wings short, expanding to the width of two feet six 

 to two feet nine inches, broad, and much rounded, and of 

 twenty-five quills, have the fourth the longest, the third and 

 fifth almost as long, the second longer than the seventh, 

 the first longer than the eighth, and about the same length 

 as the seventh; greater and lesser wing coverts, black, partially 

 white at the base; primaries, deep brownish black, with brownish 

 white shafts, the inner ones white at the base; secondaries 

 and tertiaries, white at the base, and slightly tipped with 

 whitish, forming a bar and band brownish black at the end; 

 greater and lesser under wing coverts, excepting those on the 

 outer edge of the wing, white, a few of them shewing at 

 the bend when the wing is closed. The tail is of eighteen 

 black feathers, three, four, or five of the ov.ter ones on each 

 side gradually elongated and turned outwards in the form of 

 a lyre; upper tail coverts, brownish black; under tail coverts, 

 white. Legs, short, feathered with hair-like feathers in front, 

 VOL. iv. 



