BIRDS 333 



since. I have procured a brace.' When the telegraph wires of 

 the Lancashire and Carlisle Eailway were first erected, large 

 quantities of Grouse were killed near the summit of Shap. 

 During the early months of the year Shap is one of the dreariest 

 regions in all Lakeland. Yet Yarrell tells us that, in the year 

 1835, a farmer who was firing heather on Shap Fell burnt over 

 the nest of a Eed Grouse on the 25th of March. 1 



PTARMIGAN. 



Lagopus mutus (Montin. ). 



The former existence of the Ptarmigan in Lakeland has been 

 affirmed and reaffirmed by numerous writers since first Pennant 

 stated in 1776 that a few Ptarmigan still inhabited the lofty 

 hills near Keswick. Having formerly thrown doubt on this 

 statement of Pennant, I now take up my pen to support his 

 proposition. Whether Pennant learnt the fact when travelling 

 through Lakeland does not appear. But I believe that Dr. 

 Hey sham himself had independent grounds for his statement in 

 1797, that the Ptarmigan might still be found on the mountains 

 about Keswick. I find those grounds in this fact,^that, when 

 the author of Observations chiefly Lithological visited Keswick 

 in 1803 he found a specimen of the Ptarmigan, which he calls 

 ' Tetrao Lagopus' in Hutton s Local Museum. It is extremely 

 likely that Dr. Heysham had himself seen the same bird in 

 Hutton's ' Repository ' when he wrote six years earlier. From 

 what we know of Hutton's Museum, I feel confident that the 

 late Rev. H. T. Frere saw the same specimen, i said to have 

 been killed on Skiddaw,' at Keswick, in 1841. Hutton himself 

 lived until 1831, and his daughter, Miss Hutton, was still 

 exhibiting the collection in 1841. It was finally broken up 

 before the lady's death in 1855, and what became of this 

 Ptarmigan I cannot say. Probably it was one of the last of its 

 race, for the Ptarmigan of Skiddaw must have become extinct 

 by the close of the last century. I have myself conversed with 

 men who knew Skiddaw and the surrounding hills in the 

 1 twenties,' but they had no traditional belief in local Ptarmigan, 

 1 British Birds, vol. iii. p. 75. 



