20 



NATURAL HISTORY 



This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many 

 sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, 

 but breed there in the summer ; such as lapwings, snipes, 

 wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few 

 years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good 

 seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to 

 make excursions : and in particular, in the dry summers of 

 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such 



BLACK GROUSE. 



a degree, that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed 

 twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day. 



But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, 

 now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded 

 much before shooting flying became so common, and that 

 was the heath-cock, or black game. When I was a little 

 boy I recollect one coming now and then to my father's 

 table. The last pack remembered, was killed about thirty-five 

 years ago ; and within these ten years one solitary gray hen 

 was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The 

 sportsman cried out, " A hen pheasant ;" but a gentleman 



