1910.] PLUMAGE OF TUE RED GROUSE. 1023 



Scotland southward and westwai^d there is an increasing 

 tendency to the bright red and dark red types of Grouse, 

 which cuhuinate in the very chai-acteristically bright 

 red bird of Wales and of the Midlands of England, in 

 which the predominating colour of the feathers of the 

 breast and undei-parts generally is red with fine bi-oken 

 black cross-lines, and these are sometimes almost absent. 

 3. This gradual change from north to south of black, or red- 

 and-blackto dark-red cocks, and farther south to bi'ightred 

 cocks, is accompanied (speaking veiy bi-oadly, for there are 

 many exceptions) by a loss of the white terminal borders 

 which characterize the feathers of the abdomen. 



There is no doubt that the blacker birds of the Highlands in 

 the north of Scotland are more frequently white-spotted beneath 

 than the birds obtained farther south. 



Nevertheless the white spotting is not coniined to the blacker 

 or to the darker birds, for it may be quite a conspicuous feature 

 in the bright red birds of Wales and England, though in the 

 lowlands and in the north of England, especially in Yorkshire, it 

 is a rare character, only exceptionally met with. 



Mr. Ogilvie-Grant, in his ' Handbook to the Game Bii-ds,' 

 1896, says, "The ordinary varieties of the male maybe divided 

 into three distinct types of plumage : a red form, a black form, 

 and a white-spotted form." 



The red form, he says, " is mostly to be found on the low 

 grounds of Ireland, the west coast of Scotland, and the Outer 

 Hebrides " ; and this statement is borne out not only by the 

 Inquiry's collection of Grouse-skins, but by the interesting collec- 

 tion, made by Mr. T. E. Buckley, now in the Cambridge Museum. 

 Similar birds have l)een obtained in some numbers from the 

 following areas : —Caithness, Sutherland, the Lewes, and Inver- 

 ness-shire. From Stirling, Selkirk, Northumberland, and Wicklow 

 only one or two have been examined, but in Wales the red type 

 is almost always met with, Welsh birds are of ten most typically 

 and uniformly very bright red. Dumfriesshire also undoubtedly 

 produces a large propoi-tion of the same red type. 



Bright red birds are not commonly characteristic of Ross-shire, 

 Stirlingshire, or Northumberland, notwithstanding the fact that 

 an occasional example of this type may be found there. Dum- 

 bartonshire, however, is said to produce more birds of a bright 

 red type than any other, so also is Argyllshire, and both these 

 counties fall in with Sutherlandshire as forming part of the west 

 coast of Scotland. 



The following specimens have been figured to illustrate the red 

 form of the cock Grouse : — 



Plate LXXXII. Upper surface, red tvpe in winter-plumage. 



Male Grouse, No. 630. Wales, 18.iii.07. 

 Plate LXXX. Under surface, red type in winter-plumage. 



Male Grouse, No. 407. Glendoe, Inverness-shire, 

 7.xii.06. 



