Birds. 



6263 



all probability, multitudes of young birds perished both last year 

 and this. 



I have seen grouse tower, and frequently. Still there seems to be 

 a material difference between the grouse and the partridge in this 

 respect, — a difference including two main particulars, viz., that they 

 tower much less frequently, or, to express my meaning in a more 

 exact manner, a much smaller proportion of the total birds killed 

 towers, and that those that do tower do not rise to anything like the 

 same height as the partridge. I have seen the latter bird often go up 

 seventy or eighty or even a hundred yards, and sometimes appa- 

 rently even much higher than that. I never saw a grouse, however, 

 rise higher than, I should say, thirty or thirty-five yards. Again, I 

 hardly ever saw ten brace of partridges killed without seeing some of 

 them tower, and not very unfrequently I have seen both the birds 

 killed by the successive discharge of the two barrels perform the evo- 

 lution in question. On the other hand, I have often seen twelve or 

 fifteen brace of grouse killed, and not observed a towering bird among 

 them. This I cannot help looking upon as remarkable, as the birds 

 of the two species are shot at under precisely similar circumstances : 

 both rise from the ground, both fly at much the same general eleva- 

 tion above the ground, and in much the same sort of way ; and it 

 seems very difl[icult to account for the discrepancy observable between 

 them in this particular. In the case of rooks, shot, as they usually 

 are, with the gun almost vertical, I am not surprised that towering 

 rarely occurs, or in the case of other birds fired at when flying so as 

 to cause the gun pointed at them to hav^e anything but a horizontal 

 direction ; for I feel convinced that towering is occasioned by an 

 injury in some part, wherever that part may be, which can be but 

 rarely reached by shot fired from much below^ the level at which the 

 bird is flying. I once " towered" a partridge which was shot just as 

 it passed over my head from behind ; but it was so near to me that 

 some of the pellets must necessarily have been driven with force sufl5- 

 cient to make them pass quite through the most solid parts of the 

 bird's body. 



One other peculiarity I have often noticed in the wounded grouse, 

 viz., that it falls as if shot dead, or at all events so severely that death 

 shall ensue almost immediately ; and yet, after lying, perhaps quite 

 motionless, during the whole time occupied in recharging, on your 

 approaching to " bag " them they will get up and fly away as if 

 nothing had happened. Once, last season, a bird dropped to my 

 gun. As it did not remain motionless, but continued to work ils way 



