326 Tetraonidce. 



likely that a bird of so heavy a body and such short wings 

 would have voluntarily strayed so far south. The male Caper- 

 caillie is as large as an ordinary Turkey, and well deserves the 

 honourable title of * Cock of the Wood.' 



Its name in all languages seems to allude to its size. The 

 scientific term Urogallus (from urus, ' a wild bull,' and gallus, 

 ' a cock ') would imply a larger or coarser species of Black Cock, 

 just as bullfrog, bullrush, and bullfinch signify a large species of 

 their respective families. So the German Auerhahn has a like 

 signification, the word auer having reference to the bovine 

 Aurochs ; and our ' Capercaillie/* of Gaelic origin, is interpreted 

 to mean either ' the horse of the woods,' or ' the goat of the 

 woods/ or ' the old man of the woods.' In France it is Coq de 

 Bruyere, ' Heath-cock.' 



Its general plumage is very dark green, or almost black ; and 

 it is a native of the extensive pine forests of Scotland, Scandi- 

 navia, and Russia. It feeds on the leaves and young shoots of 

 the Scotch fir, which impart a certain resinous taste to the 

 flesh ; but it also devours greedily the numerous ground-berries, 

 blue-berries, whortle-berries, cran-berries, etc., with which northern 

 forests abound ; and these I have found, in incredible quantities, in 

 the crops of several specimens whose skins I preserved in Norway. 



A full account of the peculiar 'play,' or love-song, of this 

 bird I had from the lips of a Norwegian officer with whom I 

 spent some time in a shooting expedition on the fjeld in the 

 summer of 1850, and who had been on more than one occasion 

 an eye-witness of the scene he so graphically described. In the 

 early morning, he said, the old male Capercaillie (or tiur) may 

 be seen perched on the top of a pine-tree, and soon he begins to 

 utter a harsh, grating sound, which the Norwegians call ' singing/ 

 and which may be heard at a considerable distance. This music 

 is repeated for some time at intervals, until the hen birds (TO I) 

 assemble at the lek, or playing place ; and during the utterance 



:: The Capercaillie, the Ptarmigan, and the Fulmar are the only three cases 

 in which our common English name is taken from the Gaelic. See Ibis for 

 1869, p. 35. 



