BLACK GROUSE. 193 
uncover their food. Sometimes in summer they make inroads 
into the corn-fields, and devour barley and other grain, as 
also insects and ants’ eggs, with which the young are fed. 
The Black Cock in the spring, about the middle of March, 
pairing going on then, and in April and May, utters a growling 
kind of note, as well as a squeal or scream. 
The nest is placed not far from water, or in a marshy spot, 
among heath, or in newly-made plantations, and sometimes 
in hedgerows, generally under the shelter of some low 
bush or among high grass, in some hollow, and is composed 
inartificially, but neatly, of grass and a few twigs laid together. 
The eggs are from five to eight or ten in number, of a 
pale yellowish red or yellowish white colour, irregularly 
spotted and dotted with reddish brown. They are laid in 
May. 
In the male the colours are a little lighter or deeper 
according to the season. Weight, nearly four pounds; length 
to the end of the side tail feathers, one foot ten or eleven 
‘inches, or from that to two feet; bill brownish black; iris, 
dark brown, over it is a bare space of deep red, richest in 
spring, and under it a white mark; the eyelids pale yellowish 
brown, are thinly covered with very small feathers. Head, 
crown, neck on the back and nape, deep glossy purple bluish 
black; chin, throat, and breast, brownish black, on the lower 
part the feathers tipped with white; back, deep glossy purple 
bluish black. 
The wings short, expanding to the width of two feet six 
to two feet nine inches, broad, and much rounded, and of 
twenty-five quills, have the fourth the longest, the third and 
fifth almost as long, the second longer than the seventh, 
the first longer than the eighth, and about the same length 
as the eu greater and lesser wing coverts, black, partially 
white at the base; primaries, deep brownish black, with brownish 
white shafts, ine inner ones white at the aaa, secondaries 
and tertiaries, white at the base, and slightly tipped with 
whitish, forming a bar and’ band—brownish black at the end; 
greater and lesser under wing coverts, excepting those on the 
outer edge of the wing, white, a few of them shewing at 
_ the bend when the wing is closed. The tail is of eighteen 
black feathers, three, four, or five of the outer ones on each 
side gradually elongated and turned outwards in the form of 
a lyre; upper tail coverts, brownish black; under tail coverts, 
white. Legs, short, feathered with hair-like feathers in front, 
VOL, IV. 0) 
