Class II. BLACK GROUS. 353 



all the females within hearing resort to him. 

 The young males quit their mother in the 

 beginning of winter, and keep in flocks of 

 seven or eight till spring; during that time 

 they inhabit the woods. They are very quarrel- 

 some, and will fight together like game cocks ; 

 and at that time are so inattentive to their own 

 safety, that it has often happened that two or 

 three have been killed at one shot. 



Black grous are found in various parts of Great 

 Britain, in Scotland, the Hebrides, and also in 

 Wales* Some have been shot in Ireland, in 

 the county of Sligo, where the breed was for- 

 merly introduced out of Scotland, but I believe 

 that at present the species is extirpated. They 

 are met with even far south, and Hutchins, in 

 the introduction to his history of Dorsetshire, 

 says that a few are found in that county. I 

 think they extend to the moors of Devonshire, 

 the New Forest in Hampshire, Ashdown Forest 

 in Sussex, on the north-west to Cank heath in 

 Staffordshire, and to some of the Shropshire 



in this exultation during the amorous season ; at which time the 

 peasants in the Alps, directed by the sound, have an opportunity 

 of killing them. 



* A few are still found on a moss, the property of Sir Thomas 

 Hanrner, on the confines of the hundred of Maelor in Flintshire ; 

 the breed has been extirpated in other parts of Wales. Ed. 



VOL. I. 2 A 



