VARIATION OF COLOUR IN ANIMALS lxxvii 



note : ' A fine specimen of the white grouse was shot on Monday 

 by Mr. John Hasell of Dalemain. It has been sent to Mr. 

 Hope of Penrith to be stuffed.' Cooper, the head keeper on 

 Lord Hothfield's Appleby estate, assures me that the brace of 

 nearly white Grouse, mottled with brown, recorded (P. Z. S., 

 1884, p. 45) as shot on his master's ground in 1883, in his 

 opinion bore in flight a considerable resemblance to Ptarmigan. 

 A bird considered at the time to be a Ptarmigan, and perhaps 

 the last of the race, was shot on Eoman Fell early in the present 

 century by an ancestor of my friend the Eev. J. Wharton. It 

 is possible that this was a similar variety of the Eed Grouse to 

 that last named. Partridges with white horse shoes are far 

 from uncommon in Lakeland. The ' blue ' Partridge, with 

 pale buff head, is rarer than the last, but I have examined local 

 examples from both the north and the centre of Lakeland. The 

 gamekeeper at Levens possesses a curious Black Cock. The 

 tail feathers and the tips of the wings are speckled with white, 

 so distributed as to suggest that the bird had been powdered 

 with flour. The Waders are generally true to the colour of the 

 species that they represent, but the Lapwing has a tendency to 

 develop pied flight feathers. Mr. Eichard Mann kindly gave 

 me a prettily-pied Peewit, which had been picked up dead in 

 one of the fields near Allonby. The head unfortunately was 

 useless. A pretty variety of the Woodcock, which Dr. Heysham 

 obtained on October 8, 1786, was of 'a fine ash colour, with 

 frequent bars of very delicate rufous.' A loose note of his son 

 records that a cream-coloured Common Snipe was shot near 

 Carlisle in the autumn of 1847, and stuffed for Mr. Losh of 

 Woodside. A very pretty bird which exhibited the usual 

 markings of this species on a sandy ground, was shot near 

 Stapleton, November 7, 1888. Cooper, the obliging and 

 observant head keeper at Appleby, assured me that a white 

 Jack Snipe was repeatedly seen on a moor in that neighbour- 

 hood in the early winter of 1890. He tried hard to secure it 

 for his master, but it managed to escape destruction. I once 

 bought a Snipe in Carlisle market, which was quite as dark as 

 some of the reputed examples of the variety known as Sabine's 

 Snipe, though not a typical specimen of that rare form. 



