330 THE COCK OF THE WOOD. 



much in this respect, the former having been, to a very 

 great extent, converted into unprofitable and unwhole- 

 some bogs, and the latter, even where the roots of the 

 large trees still stand bleaching on the surface, being 

 for many miles, black mud, with water almost equally 

 as black, and not producing as much, even of heath, as 

 would pasture one grouse an acre. 



Among the other losses, has been that of the GREAT 

 GROUSE, cock of the wood, or cock of the mountain, 

 (tetrao urogallus, Linnaeus). That bird, which grows 

 almost as large as a turkey, was once met with in the 

 remote parts of Ireland and Scotland ; the last found 

 specimen was killed in the latter country about fifty 

 years ago, and before that time it had been extinct in 

 Ireland. The severity of the climate cannot have been 

 the cause ; for the bird is still met with in places that 

 are colder, as among the mountains of Norway, Sweden, 

 Russia, and Siberia, and high upon the ridges of the 

 Alps and Pyrenees. But the forests that afforded it 

 shelter are gone ; and both the vegetable and the insect 

 food, which the shelter of these also afforded, have been 

 swept away by the bleak winds that now play over the 

 exposed surface, and hurry all that is moveable, and 

 consequently all that is fertile of it, into the valleys 

 where it is not wanted, or the lakes and rivers, where it 

 is lost. 



For these reasons we can notice this superb bird 

 only as one of the departed wonders of the British 

 Fauna, until some patriotic proprietor shall introduce 

 it again into one of those planted forests with which 

 the spirit of recent times is clothing the bleak moun- 

 tains, and labouring (sometimes with but little success, 



