TETRAONID^E. 147 



devolve the whole duties of rearing and protecting the 

 young. The female breeds in May, making a rude nest 

 under the shelter of intertangled herbage or brushwood, 

 and laying from six to ten eggs, of a pale yellowish colour 

 spotted with yellowish-brown. The young, when hatched, 

 are conveyed to the low, rushy hollows where there is abun- 

 dance of food supplied by the tender seeds of the rushes and 

 alpine grasses, and they are also described as feeding abun- 

 dantly on insects and their larvae : the adult birds feed on 

 various berries, buds of the birch and alder, shoots of heath 

 and fir, and grain of various kinds. The Black Grouse is 

 pretty generally spread over Europe. 



THE BED GROUSE, OR. BED PTARMIGAN. Lagopus Sco- 

 ticus. "The Bed Grouse, or Moorfowl," writes Sir W. 

 Jardine, "has peculiar claims on the naturalists and sports- 

 men of Britain, as being an insulated species hitherto un- 

 discovered except in moorland districts of Great Britain and 

 Ireland. Those birds which, in other parts of Northern 

 Europe, resemble it in the colouring of the plumage of 

 summer, differ from it in several particulars, of sufficient 

 importance to constitute distinct species." (PI. XI. fig. 78.) 



In Great Britain it is most abundant in the remote dis- 

 tricts, and especially in the wildest parts of the Highlands 



