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BLACK GROUSE. 



THE BLACK GROUSE, black game, or black cock, 

 (tetrao tetrix^) though inferior in size to the cock of 

 the woods, is still a bird of considerable dimensions, 

 being much larger than the red grouse; and when full- 

 grown, larger than the pheasant. The black cock is 

 a very handsome bird ; the general colour is black, 

 but it is irridescent, arid in certain positions of the 

 light shows a very fine purple. The tail is very much 

 forked, the outside feathers curled, and the lower part, 

 toward the base, white. Upon the throat there is a 

 kind of down, but no long or regularly-formed feathers. 

 The length of the male bird is about twenty-eight 

 inches, and the extent of the wings nearly three feet ; 

 and the weight between three and four pounds. The 

 female is a much smaller bird, and has not the curled 

 feathers in the tail. 



Though the places at which the black grouse is 

 found are not quite so elevated so near to the 

 summits of the mountains as the habitations of the 

 ptarmigan it is yet a bird fond of wild and secluded 

 spots ; and its numbers in these islands are very fast 

 declining. What with improvements of land, and im- 

 provements in the arts of its destruction, it is not nearly 

 so abundant in England as it was formerly; though 

 it be still met with in the more elevated and secluded 

 places in the south of England, in Staffordshire, in 

 North Wales, and generally where there are high and 

 lonely moors. In the Alpine parts of Scotland it is more 

 abundant, though the introduction of sheep, generally, 



