206 PTAEMIGAN. 



and early in March, 1840, a salesman in Leadenhall market 

 received fifteen thousand Ptarmigan that had been consigned 

 to him. Sir A. De Capell Brooke calculated that sixty 

 thousand had been killed during one winter in Lapland: 

 and Mr. Lloyd says that a dealer in Norway will dispose 

 of fifty thousand in a season.' It is from these countries 

 that such prodigious numbers come, and they are all taken 

 in horse-hair nooses. The Ptarmigan is a bird easily kept in 

 confinement, and has been known to breed in the tame state. 



Their flight is low, straight, and moderately rapid, and 

 causes a whirring noise; they do not ordinarily fly far, and 

 when alighting run on a little way. In walking about, the 

 back is rounded up and the tail drooped, but if observant 

 of supposed danger, the attitude becomes attentive. They 

 can run very fast if necessary, and do so if alarmed, dipping 

 into the air over some eminence, and so disappearing. At 

 night they roost either under a stone or tuft, or else in 

 the snow, scooping out a hollow in which they almost 

 completely bury themselves, and indeed sometimes it proves 

 their grave, in which they are snowed up, though they can 

 remain, it is said, for a week, till a thaw or some increased 

 exertion on their own part releases them. 



They feed on the buds, berries, leaves, blossoms, and seeds 

 of various plants and shrubs the heath, the cranberry, the 

 cloudberry, the bilberry, the crowberry, the dwarf birch, and 

 others, arid walk about among them to select such as are 

 most to their liking, and also swallow small fragments of 

 stone and sand to aid the triturition of their food. Snow 

 seems to supply their drink, for they go in search of it in 

 the summer months. The young are at first fed with insects. 



Their call or note is a wild, harsh, hoarse, grating croak, 

 which harmonizes well with the desolate scenes which the 

 presence of the bird almost alone enlivens. It is sometimes 

 low, and sometimes more loud is heard at a great distance 

 in the thin air of the exalted regions which furnish these 

 Grouse with a dwelling-place. It is occasionally prolonged 

 for some length of time, and is heard occasionally when the 

 bird is flying, as well as when he is settled. 



The Ptarmigan pairs early in the spring, and the eggs are 

 begun to be laid in June, and to be sat upon by the 

 beginning of July, incubation lasting three weeks. The hen 

 alone brings up the brood, and has been known to do so 

 even when the male had been taken, and so also if one of 



