GAME BIRDS OF WOLMER FOREST 
13 
Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood of 
a paler colour and softer nature, which the inhabitants called 
fir ; but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could dis- 
cover nothing resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose 
that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic 
tree. 
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 fo- 
rest, into which they love to make excursions ; and in particular, 
in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they 
swarmed to such a degree, that parties of unreasonable sports- 
men 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 fly- 
ing became so common, and that was 
the heath-cock, black game, or grouse. 
When I was a little boy I recollect 
one coming now and then to my 
father's table. The last pack re- Black Grouse, 
membered was killed about thirty-five years ago; and within 
these ten years one solitary grey hen was sprung by some beagles 
in beating for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, " A hen phea- 
sant but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in 
the north of England, assured me that it was a grey hen.* 
more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops 
of wails." See Hales's Haemastatics, p. 360. Ouere, Might not such observations be reduced to 
domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about houses; and 
in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding- of pavements baths, and graves, and other hidden 
relics of curious antiquity? 
* This fine species, the tetrao tetrix or black grouse, inhabits every where less elevated situa- 
tions than the other British species which by sportsmen are termed grouse, being found, 
though at present nowhere very plentifully, in the south of England, wherever there are heathy 
wilds of sufficient extent, intermingled here and there with coppice, or brushwood, and patches oi 
boggy ground. They occur sparingly upon the Devonshire moors and other heathy districts in 
the western counties, also, rather more abundantly, in the New-forest, Hants., and now and then 
a solitary individual may be flushed on the extensive moorland range of Hounslovv and Bagshots 
but their principal localities lie more to the north, upon the lower slopes of heathy and moun- 
tainous regions, which are covered with a natural growth of willow, birch, and alder, and inter- 
sected by morasses, clothed with coarse herbage, also the deep and wooded dells which so com 
monly occur in the valleys between the mountains. They subsist (all <he poultry tribes beins 
nearly omnivorous) on various kinds of food, according to thu season, as insects, the different 
