40 GALLING. 



ceous birds, are finer flavoured in dry seasons than in rainy 

 ones, though they fly earlier, are stronger on the wing, and 

 therefore more difficult to be procured. They also continue 

 longer sweet when the weather is dry.* 



TOES BABE, OR NEARLY SO, BUT THE TAESI FEATHERED. 



(Tetrad). 



Of these there used to be formerly two species black 

 grous, black cock, or heath cock, and wood grous, cock of the 

 woods, or capercailzie ; the third name being merely a cor- 

 ruption of the Gaelic for the second. The last is now extinct 

 in the British islands, and has been so for the last seventy 

 years, though still abundant on some parts of continental 

 Europe. 



These birds inhabit still further down than the red grous, 

 the feathery or downy foot being always characteristic of a 

 mountaineer, or inhabitant of cold climates, and exposed to 

 the violence of the atmosphere. The Bantam fowls might be 

 considered as an exception, if they were not natives of a 

 country which sets all the distinctions both of animals and of 

 plants, that are attempted to be founded on differences of 

 latitude, at complete defiance. They are from Japan, and 

 many of the natural productions of Japan are tropical in 

 their appearance, and yet can .bear the winter in cdd lati- 

 tudes better than even the native productions of those lati- 

 tudes j we must not, therefore, object to the rule, becaise one 

 of the Japanese gallinse is an exception. 



Both of these species have the feet adapted for perching ; 

 and though the toes are not feathered, they are margined 

 or fringed on the sides, so that they enable the birds to walk 



* It is a very remarkable circumstance that the red grous is peuliar 

 to the British Islands ; having never been met with on the Continent. 



M. 



