I 



32 THE CAPERCAILLTE. 



An additional notice will be found in an able article ' On 

 the Total and Partial Extermination of Animals! by James 

 Fennel, in Kennie's ' The Field Naturalist; 1834, p. 194. This 

 author says, that at that time the Wood Grouse or Cock of the 

 Wood had been extinct in Ireland for nearly seventy years, 

 and in Scotland for fifty years. 



Mr. A. G. More of Dublin, who has been making inquiries 

 in my behalf for some time past, regarding Capercaillies in 

 Ireland, writes to me that he has not been able to obtain any 

 additional information to the above in that country. 



On the causes of the extinction of the species in Scotland 

 I can say little. We can now, I believe, only speculate upon 

 what changes of condition and what surrounding causes could 

 have extirpated them. What appears to me to be the most 

 likely factors were as follows : The probable destruction of 

 great forest tracts by fire, 1 the cutting down of the same by 

 man as late as the days of Cromwell, and the wasting away 

 of the forests from natural causes, by the conversion of dry 

 forests into bogs and morasses, and, resulting from this, the 

 decrease of, and changes in, the food of the species. Mr. Col- 

 quhoun (' Ferae Naturae of the British Isles! P- 41-42) is of 

 this opinion, but adds as a factor, the increased population. 

 If we accept the above as the most probable causes, and come 



Turkies" were undoubtedly " of the true breed " of Turkey from the Ameri- 

 can stock. For all the above references, see Thompson's 'Birds of Ireland / 

 vol. ii. p. 31, from which I have quoted freely. 



1 Evidence of the destruction of great tracts of forest country are frequently 

 to be met with in early history. Thus, to get rid of wolves, a large pine 

 forest extending "from the western braes of Lochaber to the Black Water and 

 mosses of Rannoch was burned to expel the wolves," and another "In the 

 neighbourhood of Loch Sloi, a tract of woods, nearly twenty miles in extent, 

 was consumed for the same purpose " (v. Nctes to James Hay Allen's poem 

 ' The Last Deer of Beann Doran,' London, 1822). Sir "Walter Scott also, in 

 his Essay 'On Planting Waste Lands' ('Miscellaneous Prose Works,' vol. 

 xxi. p. 9), and other historians, afford evidence of a natural wasting away and 

 decay of old forests, as well as their destruction by enemies, " thereby to re- 

 move a most important part of the national defence " (op. cit., p. 10). 



