The Capercaillie 3 
Sweden it reaches its greatest size (males have been described as weighing 16 or 17 lbs.). 
In general appearance it varies little until the Urals are crossed, when the lower parts 
of the bird become almost white. It is found in North-East Turkestan and the Altai 
Mountains. In the extreme east of Siberia it is replaced by a smaller sub-species, 
Tetrao urogalloides (Middendorf). The species is found throughout the pine woods of 
Central Europe, and southwards to the Pyrenees and the Alps. It is common in Germany, 
Austria-Hungary, Poland, and especially so in the Balkans and the Carpathians. 
It is doubtful if it still exists in Acanania (Greece), which has been described as the 
southern limit, although Pennant (Arctic Zoology, 1792, vol. i. p. 365) traces it to the 
islands of Crete and Milo. 
The Capercaillie was known to the ancient Britons under the name of Ceiliog Coed, 
but of no bird or mammal of importance have we so few references as to its former 
occurrence and distribution in England. Its extermination was probably coincidental 
with the destruction of the pine forests. We know, however, that it survived in Ireland 
and Scotland long after it was extinct in England. Pennant, in his Tour, enumerates 
it amongst the beasts of the chase in Wales. He says: "The bird mentioned here is 
the Cock of the Wood, whose habit it is to sit perched on a bough, where it will gaze 
till it is shot, as it was in the old times, by the bow or cross-bow." By the middle of the 
seventeenth century it is supposed to have become scarce, and it is probable that it became 
quite extinct in Scotland and Ireland during the eighteenth century. A few were known 
to exist near Thomastown, Tipperary, till the year 1760 (Pennant), and Longfield in his 
treatise on the Game Laws in Ireland says that the "Wild Turkeys" of George III. Act 
must have been Capercaillie, adding that the species was not extinct so late as 1787. 
"A Catalogue of the Birds of Ireland, by Dr. Patrick Brown, who died in 1790," 
says Messrs. Ussher and Warren, 1 "showed that this bird still existed in his time 
(Proc. Dub. N.H. Soc, 18th Dec. 1851) ; but though 'Wild Turkeys' are subse- 
quently spoken of, we have no distinct evidence that the Capercaillie survived here 
as late as the end of the eighteenth century." 
Giraldus Cambrensis (a.d. 1357), in his Topographia Hibemice (lib. ii. p. 47), 
says : " Pavones silvestres hie abundant." There is little reason to doubt that the 
author meant the first words (lit. wood-peacocks) to refer to Capercaillie. F. Willoughby 
(a.d. 1676), John Ray (a.d. 1678), O'Flaherty (a.d. 1684), and J. Rutty (a.d. 1772) all 
refer to the bird as the " Cock of the Wood," and state that it is to be found in woods 
and mountains, whilst the last named states that they were, at the time he wrote, extinct 
in Ireland "by reason of the destruction of our woods" (Nat. Hist, of the County 
of Dublin, 1772, vol. i. p. 302). 
As regards the history and subsequent extinction of the species in Scotland, we have 
the admirable little book by J. A. Harvie-Brown, entitled The Capercaillie in Scotland, 
which gives a very careful summary of the past history and general spread of the 
species up to the date of writing (1888), since its reintroduction in 1837. Hector Boetius 
(1526) is the first writer to mention 2 the Capercaillie: " Unum magnitudine corvum 
paulo superans Auercalze, i. silvestris equi apelati, solius pinis arboris extremis flagellis 
1 Birds of Inland, p. 230. 
- Hist. Salorum Scot. Rtgn. Dtscript., fol. xii. 47. 
