BLACK GROUSE. 37 



under one of these tufts or some low bushy shrub she places her- nest, which is of the 

 most simple construction, being composed of a few dried stems of grass. In this she 

 deposits her eggs, varying in number from six to ten. They are in colour yellowish 

 white, speckled and blotched with reddish brown, and measure two inches in length, by 

 one inch and five lines in breadth. Soon after the young birds are produced, they are 

 taken by the mother to more elevated regions, where, however, a rank and coarse herbage 

 will generally be found, along with boggy moist ground, and but little heather. 



According to the author of "The Moor and the Loch," the principal food of the young 

 birds consists of the brown seeds of a short thick rush, near which the hen and young- 

 may always be found, and which is easily seen on the moor. This fact, as we have 

 before hinted, should be borne in mind in any future attempts to introduce the Black 

 Grouse into the sister country. 



Yarious efforts have, at different times, been made to domesticate the Black Grouse, 

 but as yet entirely without success, for in no instance have they ever bred while in a state 

 of captivity : they, however, not only live, but individually do well in confinement. This 

 inherent wildness, possessed alike by many of our wild animals and some of the hiunan 

 aboriginal inhabitants of foreign lands, is an exceedingly curious and interesting fact; 

 the insuperable bar which it places to the complete domestication of numerous useful 

 animals, on the one hand, and to the humanizing influences of civilization, on the 

 other, are both inexplicable to us, but at the same time should lead us to acknowledge 

 them as powerful proofs of the existence of certain laws, fixed by that Almighty Being 

 who has said hitherto shalt thou go, and no farther. 



Like others of the gallinaceous birds, it occasionally happens that a female Black 

 Grouse will assume more or less the plumage of the male; we are not aware, however, that 

 this curious change has ever gone to the extent that is not uncommon in the Pheasant; 

 it is, we believe, usually limited to the presence of some black feathers among their 

 ordinary plumage. The cause is probably the same as in the case of the Pheasant. 



Sir William Jardine possesses "a female, or Gray Hen, shot by the late Sir Sidney 

 Beckwith, entirely of a dull whitish gray, having the cross markings of a darker and 

 browner shade." The rarity, however, of records of varieties of the Black Grouse, prove 

 that these changes are by no means common; and it is a welbknown fact that certain 

 species of birds are seldom, if ever, found to vary from the normal standard, while others 

 are subject to constant variations. Domestication has doubtless a great influence in educing 

 variations in colour, and we accordingly find many domesticated birds losing almost entirely 

 the characteristic colour of their wild prototypes; as for example the Tame Duck, the 

 Goose, and many breeds of the Barn-door Fowl. The colours, if we may so call them, 

 usually involved in these changes, are black and white and their mixtures, and perhaps, 

 but more rarely, brown; we do not remember to have ever heard of any variety exhibiting 



