20 
NATURAL HISTORY 
This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many 
sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, 
but breed there in the summer ; such as lapwings, snipes, 
wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few 
years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good 
seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to 
make excursions : and in particular, in the dry summers of 
1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such 
BLACK GROUSE. 
a degree, that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed 
twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day. 
But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, 
now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded 
much before shooting flying became so common, and that 
was the heath-cock, or black game. When I was a little 
boy I recollect one coming now and then to my father's 
table. The last pack remembered, was killed about thirty-five 
years ago ; and within these ten years one solitary gray hen 
was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The 
sportsman cried out, A hen pheasant but a gentleman 
