RED GROUSE. 197 
secure their stay. One was killed in Norfolk many years 
since near Downham, and one in 1794 near Wedhampton, in 
Wiltshire. | 
In the wild state they abound, in certainly a remarkable degree 
considering the vast numbers that are shot every year, wher- 
ever there is sufficiently long heather, which affords them 
both home and food. The nature of the latter imparts a 
peculiar bitter flavour to them, but the taste for it is soon 
acquired, and there is hardly a better game bird. They pre- 
fer drier places to the low and swampy. In the more remote 
parts of Scotland they are looked upon as birds of good omen, 
and their morning crow is considered as a signal for the dark 
spirits of the night to take their departure. They are capable of 
being kept in a state of domestication, and in some instances 
have been known to breed in captivity; one pair in the aviary 
of the Dowager Duchess of Portland, and another pair at Mr. 
Grierson’s, of Rathfarnham, in the county of Dublin; Lord 
Stanley also had a pair which laid ten eggs and brought out 
eight young: they had had a brood the year before he obtained 
them. 
The Grouse frequents the higher, but not the highest, parts 
of the heather-clad mountains, as likewise the - hills and 
moors, and also is found in the level country if interspersed 
with heath. Archibald Hepburn, Esq. mentions in the 
‘Zoologist, page 186, his having in one instance known a 
hen bird among bent-covered sand hills, six miles from the 
nearest heath, and there she brought up a brood of young. 
In winter they for the most part descend to lower ranges 
from the higher ones. They generally go in pairs, but a 
single bird is often seen; when the snow is on the ground 
they congregate in flocks. In the spring the cock is pugnacious - 
among his fellows, but not,so much so as many other kindred 
birds; at that time he is very bold, and seems to scorn fear, 
as perched upon some old wall or hillock he crows aloud or 
struts about, even though you pass quite close. 
If disturbed from the nest, on which, however, she will 
often sit till about trodden upon, the hen Grouse will shuffle 
through the heath in an awkward and apparently disabled 
manner, or fly with a low and undecided flight to a little 
distance, and then run off among it, and will not take wing till 
she has proceeded to a considerable distance, in the endeavour 
to allure the intruder to follow her? sometimes she even falls 
a sacrifice to her careful anxiety: the male does not sit. 
