7'. Scoticus, Lin. &c. Log opus Scoticus, Leach and Vieil. Red Grous, Red Ptarmigan, Red Game, Mow:fowl, Mooreock, Gorcock, &c. Plumage of a horse-chesnut brown hue, eyebrows toothed, and very elevated, tarsi and toes covered with grey hairs, sixteen feathers in the tail, the lateral ones blackish, and terminated with horse chesnut brown. Caruncle on the eyebrows scarlet and lunated. The shadings of the female are less pure and deep, the brown hues being often varied with rufous, the black zig-zag lines and spots being more numerous, and the red eyebrows inconspicuous. The young are easily distinguished by their bright rufous plumage, varied with irregular blackish spots and stripes. The length of the male is about sixteen inches, its weight nineteen ounces, and that of the female fifteen ounces.
The red grous are found in extensive wastes, overspread with heaths, and not in woods, as in the mountains of Wales, in the moorlands of Yorkshire, and the north of England, but more plentifully in the Highlands of Scot land and in the waste moors of North Britain in general. They are also met with in the Hebrides, the islands of the Clyde, and in the mountains and bogs of Ireland ; but those noticed by Baron as natives of France, Spain, Italy, &e. seem either to form distinct species, or at least varieties. Linne appears to have been unacquainted with them, and Gmelin regarded them as a variety of the ptarmigan. It is not a little remarkable, that Captain Carmichael should have encountered them in the Island of Tristan da Cunha, which is situated between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena. In this country, they feed on the mountain and bog berries, and, in defect of these, on the tops of the heath. The female lays from eight to fourteen eggs, not unlike those of the black grous, hut smaller, in a rude nest, on the ground. The young brood follow the hen till winter, when they unite in flocks, sometimes to the amount of thirty or forty, and are then very shy, and difficult to be shot. In severe winters, they sometimes descend from the hilly tracts in prodigious numbers. The shooting of them on our Scottish moors, in autumn, is a favourite diversion of our gentry, and their flesh is esteemed a dainty, but it soon becomes tainted, especially if the birds are not drawn immediately on being killed. Several instances are recorded of their
being reared in confinement.
T. umbellus, Lin. &c. Bonasa umbellus, Steph. Ruffed Groxs, Ruffed Heathcock, Shoulder-knot Grous, Shoul der-knot Heathcock, or Drumming Partridge. Head crested, body variegated above, with fuscous red and black, fulvous white beneath, breast varied with brown lunules, feathers of the axilla: larger, elongated, of a deep azure.; rump sprinkled with white spots, tail fasciated near the tip, a broad black band, the tip greyish-white. The tufts on each side of the neck are placed on its lower portion, near the insertion of the wings, and, when expanded, ap pear of a large size ; they are bright black, with a fine steel gloss ; and the shorter ones are slightly tipped with white or red. In the female the crest and ruff are incon spicuous.
This species is very common, not only in Canada, but in Maryland and in Pennsylvania. When the male is tranquil, he allows the crest and ruff to fall down, but, when agitated, he erects them both, especially when he expands his tail like a fan, lets down his wings to the ground, and stalks before his mate. If the latter happens to be at a distance, he recalls her by a flapping of the wings, at first slow and regular, and afterwards so hurried and loud, as to have been compared to the beating of a drum, or even to distant thunder. It is in spring and autumn that he npakes this thumping sound, about nine o'clock in the morning, and, again, towards four o'clock in the afternoon. The pitiless sportsman hears it at a distance, hastens to the spot, and frequently socures his prize. The female breeds twice in the year, and lays from nine to sixteen eggs, of a brownish-white, without spots, and nearly of the size of those of a young domes tic fowl. Her nest is placed near the stump of a tree, among dry leaves; the incubation lasts three weeks ; the young follow the mother like chickens, and the whole brood keep together till spring, feeding on all sorts of grain and fruit, and manifesting a predilection to ivy berries.