ii NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
Nor does the loss of our Mack game prove the only gap in the 
fauna Selborniensis ; for another beautiful hnk in the chain of be- 
ings is wanting, I mean the red deer, which towards the beginning 
of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made 
Red Deer. 
wild berries, and the seeds of various rushes and other plants, but chiefly on the young aed 
tender shoots of the lieath ; and, in winter, when these are no lunger procurable, ui)0)i the budt 
and tops of thebirch and wild aider, and the embryo shoots of the different 6rs. Th>ise they cai? 
readily obtain, as unlike the ptarmigan {lai;opus), to which genus the red grouse of sportsmen 
belongs, thej' are capable of perching upon trees, and always retire to roost at niglu, like phea- 
sants, on a horizontal bough. Thpy frequentl)' descend, too, in the vicinity of cultivation, tc 
perk some grain in the cornfields. The black grouse also differs from the red, and the other 
members of the genus lagojius, in being a polygamous bird, as indeed are all those which now 
range in telrao- The latter considerably resemble, in their manners, the common domestic poultry, 
and the males of them spread the tail, and strut, and drop their wings in the style of the turkey 
and pea-fowl, a habit which is observed in no species of the ptarmigan genus, nor in any mono- 
gamous kind with which I am acquainted, but which is curiously noticeable in the cow-bunting 
of Wilson's "American Ornithology," the only known member of the extensive natural family to 
which it belongs which is not so. Most polygamous birds are indeed provided, at least in the 
breeding season, with some kind of curious displa)'^, and this is remarkably exemplified in the 
case of the ruff {machetes variabilis) , the only known species of its numerous tribe which does 
not pair, and also the only one which is adorned in spring with a singular mass of produceJ 
fetithers about the head and neck. The true grouse hybridize very readily in confiuenifint with 
