GROUSE AND PTARMIGAN. 401 
interbreeds with the red grouse, and more rarely with the willow-grouse, hazel-hen, 
and pheasant, while crosses with domestic fowls have been known to occur. 
The largest members of the tribe are the capercaillie or wood- 
grouse, inhabiting the pine-forests of Northern and Central Europe and 
Asia. Three different species and one well-marked local race are known, all of 
which may be recognised by their very large size, as well as by their rounded tail 
composed of eighteen feathers. The capercaillie (Tetrao wrogallus) ranges through 
Northern and Central Europe to Turkestan and the Altai, but in the Urals is 
represented by a paler form, with the whole of the breast and under-parts white 
in the male. In typical examples of the common species the breast and under- 
parts are black, with some of the feathers in the middle of the breast tipped with 
white, but numerous examples are to be met with in the London market in every 
intermediate stage of plumage, and are believed to be imported from some of the 
southern states of Russia, though the exact locality is uncertain. In North-East 
Capercaillie. 






BLACK-GAME IN THE SNOW. 
Siberia a different species (7. parvirostris) occurs, while the third form 
(T. kamschaticus) is confined to Kamschatka. These eastern birds are dis- 
tinguished from the common species by their smaller bill, and by the scapulars 
being widely tipped with white; the females being also much darker on the under- 
parts. From one another they may be distinguished by the white tips of the 
scapulars in the smaller Kamschatkan species being wide and forming a con- 
tinuous white band, while in the Siberian bird they constitute an interrupted line 
of white spots. Formerly indigenous in Scotland and Ireland, the eapercaillie was 
exterminated towards the end of the last century, but was reintroduced in 1837 
into Scotland, and is now fairly plentiful in the counties of Perth, Stirling, and 
Forfar. The capercaillie is polygamous; and its nesting-habits and eggs are very 
similar to those of black-game, the latter being buff spotted with reddish 
brown. As many as twelve eggs are sometimes laid, but the capercaillie hen is a 
bad mother, and seldom succeeds in rearing more than one or two of her somewhat 
delicate young. The male is a remarkably wary bird, much harder to obtain than 
the female, and it is astonishing, considering his large size and weight, how quietly 
VOL. IV.—26 
