VOL. LXIII.} PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 435 



seems to make an unnecessary species of tetrao, under the name of le petit 

 tetras, k plumage variable; as his principal argument for this opinion is, that 

 they are not found on the mountains, as the lagopi are. Now it is very clear, 

 from the name given in the catalogue from Hudson's Bay to this bird, of the 

 willow partridge, that it lives entirely in that part of the world on the plains; 

 nor are there, it is believed, any very high mountains in the neighbourhood of 

 our forts. 



When M. de BufFon therefore conceives, that the lagopus is always endea- 

 vouring to find out snow and ice, and that it carefully avoids the glare of the sun ; 

 it should seem that the observation is by no means generally true; because, 

 though the rigour of a Hudson's Bay winter is great, yet the summer is very 

 pleasant, and the snow soon disappears, without which M. de BufFon imagines 

 that the bird cannot exist; though his Qth plate represents the ptarmigan, in his 

 winter dress, surrounded with trees and plants in most luxuriant foliage and vege- 

 tation. A new observation is, that the claws are scooped ofF at the end exactly 

 like a writing pen, only wanting the slit; which circumstance may likewise be 

 seen in the claws of our common grous, or heath-game, though the resemblance 

 is not quite so strong as in the ptarmigan. 



Mr. B. concludes with copying, from the catalogue transmitted with the spe- 

 cimens from Hudson's Bay, what further relates to the lagopus; which, as before 

 observed, is there called a willow-partridge.* " The willow-partridges gather 

 together in large flocks in the beginning of October, harbouring amongst the 

 willows, the tops of which are their principal food; they then change to their 

 winter dress. They change again in March, and have their complete summer 

 dress by the latter end of June. They make their nest in the ground in dry 

 ridges; and are so plentiful, that 10000 have been killed in the three forts in 

 one winter." 



^. 

 XXIX. On the Effects of Lightning at Steeple ^shton and Holt, Wilts, June 



20, 1772, extracted from several Letters, communicated by Edw. King, Esq., 



F.R.S. p. 231. 



L. Eliot, vicar of Steeple Ashton, in Wiltshire, writes, that on the 20th of 

 June, 1772, between 12 and 1 o'clock in the afternoon, a violent storm of 

 thunder and lightning happened at Steeple Ashton, in Wiltshire. During the 

 storm, a woman in the village saw a large quantity of lightning come out of a 

 cloud, part of which is supposed to have fallen on the top of the north chimney 



* It is not at all extraordinary, that it should there be considered as a partridge, because the white 

 partridge is the name given to this bird by the old ornithologists, who have very naturally considered 

 edible birds nearly of the same size as partiidges, when they have short tails, and as pheasants, when 

 they have long ones.-^Orig. 



3 k2 



