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of their preserved boundaries, owing to the want of a sufficiently extended range of wide open 

 country. In that neighbourhood, however, it seems probable that this species has existed for a 

 very long period, fluctuating in numbers, but never wholly extinct ; and of late years they appear 

 to have increased considerably about Snettisham and Dersingham, on the L'Estrange estate, and 

 on property of Mr. Hamond at Bawsay, and Leziate, in the same neighbourhood, where an ample 

 extent of wood and heath, wild in the extreme, and but slightly preserved for other game, has 

 afforded the three most essential conditions of space, food and quiet. In this locality several 

 couples are annually killed during the shooting-season ; and they are also found in the autumn 

 at Sandringham, on the estate of His Eoyal Highness the Prince of Wales, though I am not sure 

 that they also breed there." Mr. Cordeaux, in his handy little work on the birds of the Humber 

 district, writes that " it was introduced some years since in the wild uncultivated district near 

 Frodingham, on the Trent side ; and I have seen an old cock bird that was shot in that neigh- 

 bourhood. Towards the close of the shooting-season of 1871-72, the Rev. H. G. Southwell shot 

 a Greyhen in the parish of £\ T ettleton, near Caistor." 



To the north it becomes much more numerous, and in Scotland is one of the common game 

 birds in suitable localities throughout the country. Mr. R. Gray speaks of it as common on all 

 the mountain-ranges, hilly districts, and patches of upland heath, extending from the north of 

 Sutherlandshire to the Mull of Galloway. It is likewise found plentifully on many of the Inner 

 Hebrides. On Mull it is much commoner than the Red Grouse, as I have been informed by 

 Mr. Graham ; and on Islay, according to Mr. Elwes, it is increasing rapidly in the north part of 

 the island, although that portion of it is bare of cover. In autumn it regularly frequents the 

 stubble-fields there, morning and evening, to feed. I have observed the same habit of the species 

 on the Loch-Lomond range of hills, where it is very abundant. In this district the birds are 

 found from a moderate elevation to the summit of the hills on the west side ; but in the 

 breeding-season the females appear to come nearer the glens, especially those fringed with 

 birch trees, at the root of which the nests are often placed. 



Being anxious to know whether black game could be obtained within sight of so large a 

 city as Glasgow, I applied to Mr. G. Shirlan, of Motherwell, who has kindly sent me the following 

 note : — " The moorland that I sometimes take a shot over is in the upper part of the parish of 

 Carluke, from which, in a clear day, St. Rollox is distinctly visible. Black game are scarcer 

 than Red Grouse, which are plentiful : the former breed sometimes well out in the moors on 

 suitable feeding-grounds, such as the margin of a watercourse, where there is plenty of bent- 

 grass and rushes ; but, for the most part, you find them on cultivated ground on the outskirts of 

 the moor, and the more readily if there should be a scraggy plantation, high beech and birch 

 hedges, and a meadow close by. It has become of late years tolerably common in the south- 

 west of Scotland. It wanders to the very verge of the rocky headlands, Burrow Head, and the 

 Mull of Galloway, and even to the heights above Port Patrick, whence it can, by lifting its head 

 above the heather, see the Irish coast." Though, as stated by Mr. Gray, it occurs within sight 

 of the Irish coast, it is not found in that country ; and Thompson writes that he has never met 

 with any satisfactory evidence of its ever having been indigenous in Ireland. 



It has not been met with on the Faeroes or in Iceland ; but in Norway it has, according to 



