236 



name. ho w ever. is not strictly applicable. partly because the ..Rak- 

 kelhane" is a compound and not a simple species, and should the- 

 refore, as such, have a compound and not a simple name; and partly 

 because, as Sundevall has shown, the termination ides is cal- 

 culated to impart a wrong notion concerning the male parent, to 

 which in grammatical correctness it should refer. 



Probably it was thought unnecessary to inquire further into a 

 matter comparatively so unimportant. But seeing that this form oc- 

 curs in a wild, and only in a wild state, it would be well to find an 

 appropriate name whereby to give it a place in the system. In the 

 year 1869, Sundevall proposed a change in that respect, and sug- 

 gested the name of Tetrao urogallo-tetr icides, which mi ght 

 be regarded as satisfactory: the termination ides, however, could 

 surely be dropped, partly because it is superfluous, and partly 

 because it would prove impossible to apply it in analogous cases. 

 The easiest way out of the difficulty would seem to be a simple 

 compound of the names of both parents, the name of the mother 

 being subordinated to that of the father. Thus we get the designa- 

 tion Tetrao ur og all o-t et r ix. 1 



Of this hybrid, a considerable number of individuals are annually 

 procured from various parts of the country, male examples being 

 every winter found at Christiania among game brought from the 

 interior wooded districts of the south: most of them come from 

 Gudbrandsdal and Østerdal and the southern portions of Trond- 

 hjem Stift, and from Thelemarken in Christiansand Stift. In 

 several of these localities the hybrid origin of the bird is well 

 known to the inhabitants. Along the west coast it can only be 

 produced in the most inland tracts ( T. urogallus is not widely distri- 

 buted here). The most northerly point at which it has been found 

 or indeed can occur. is the Balsfjord, near Tromsø (69° 20'), this 

 locality being the extreme range of one of the parents (Tetrao tetrijc). 



Of the individuals hitherto examined from Norway, one only was a 

 female; this bird (wing 256 mm, tail 113, tarsus 42, middle toe, 



1 Vide corresponding terms inbotany: Verbascum thapso-nigrwn, Schied., Cirsium 

 acauli-oleraceuin, N&g , C. oleraceo-heterophi/llum, N&g. etc. 



