THE RED GROUSE. 51 



discharge live birds, from one pack. In one of the instances the 

 pack consisted of only seven birds. 



On looking to the food contained in numbers of grouse when 

 their favourite berries were not to be had, I have found it to be 

 chiefly the tops of heath, with occasionally the stem of the bilberry 

 ( Vaccinium Myrtillus) . Portions of the fir club-moss (Li/cqpodium 

 selagd), about an inch in length, being occasionally found strewn 

 about the mountain-tops, appear to me as indicating its being 

 used as food. On opening the intestines of a deceased bird, 

 shot on the 14th of August at Ballantrae (but which had been 

 wounded perhaps three weeks before), I found them nearly full of 

 tape-worms (Taenia). Its gizzard was entirely filled with the 

 fruit of the Empetrum nigrum, there called heather-berry. My 

 friend just alluded to has very frequently found oats in the crops 

 of grouse killed in the last-named locality. They are considered 

 to resort to their feeding grounds there in the evening, about an 

 hour before black game. 



Although Ireland is deficient in the wood grouse, the black game, 

 and the ptarmigan, all of which are doubtless more admired when 

 displayed in museums than the red grouse, yet this bird, which 

 the island does produce, is, in the estimation of the sportsman, 

 and consequently in a pecuniary point of view, by far the most 

 valuable of the four ; — more so indeed than any other species of 

 grouse.* It is unknown beyond the limit of the British Isles, 

 and is the only bird peculiar to them. With the Highlands of 

 Scotland, however, rather than with Ireland, the Tetrao Scoticus 

 is mentally associated; vast tracts of mountain heath there often 

 deriving their value from it alone. 



Nothing can be more invigorating, mentally or bodily, than 

 the withdrawal for a time from the bustle of town civilization to 

 the pure air of the mountain solitudes where this bird is found, 

 and in the midst of which the sportsman formerly — before grouse 



* See article on 'Highland Sport' Quarterly Review, Dec. 1845 (vol. lxxvii.) — 

 (nominally a review of Scrope's " Days and Night's of Salmon Fishing ") for statistics 

 on the subject of the Red Grouse ; also a Letter from the Earl of Malmesbury to Sir 

 George Grey on the " Revision of the Game Laws," p. 8, &c. (1848.) 



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