That the Black-Cock wan known to the ancients there is little doubt. Aristotle, in the first chapter of his Gth book, where ho is speaking of the nidification of birds, says that " Those which are not strong of flight, such as partridges and quails, do not lay in nests (properly so called) but on the ground, merely collecting together materials (GAom): no also do the larks (acopvErs) and the tetrix." At the end of the chapter he says, " But the 'Petri:, which the Athenian. call Ourax, neither makes its nest upon the bare ground nor yet upon trees, but upon low plants (iTl TOif XapalOAOIT orrols):" answering to Tern mina's description—" niche dace les bruyres ou dans lea buinsons:" to Sclby's—" under the shelter of a tall tuft or low bush, generally where long and coarse grasses abound :" and to Graves's—" on any dry gram or heath, without any appearance of a nest, but most gene Tho flesh of the Black Grouse is much esteemed. The different colour of the flesh of the pectoral muscles mind have struck every one. The internal layer, which is remarkably white, is esteemed the roost delicate portion. felon goes so far as to say that the three pec toral muscles have three different flavours : the first that of beef, the next that of partridge, and the third that of pheasant.
Male.—Weight of a fine specimen about 4 pounds; bill dusky black ; irides hazel •, head, neck, breast, back, and rump glossy black, shot with steel-blue and purple ; eye-brows naked, granulated, and of a bright vermilion red ; belly, wing-coverts, and tail pitch black ; secondaries tipped with pure white, and forming with the neighbour ing coverts a band across each wing ; under tail-coverts pure white ; lege furnished with hair-like feathers of a dark-brown, speckled with gray ; toes pectinated ; tail black—the exterior feathers bend outwards, and are much longer than those in the middle : this arrangement gives the hingular curvature and forked shape to the tail which distinguishes the bird.
Feemies---Weight about 2 pounds; general colour ferruginous, barred and mottled with black above, paler below, with dusky and brown bars ; under tail-coverts white, streaked with black ; tail orange-brown, speckled with black, showing a slight disposition to be forked, tipped with grayish white.
No person is permitted to kill, destroy, carry, sell, buy, or have in his possession, any Heath-Fowl, commonly called Black Caine, between the 10th of December and 20th of August. The Ihnitation in the New Forest, Somerset, and Devon is greater, being from the 10th of December to the 1st of September.
• Kubrick Several well-authenticated Methuen have occurred of hybrids bred between the Common Pheasant and the Gray lien. White, in his 11 istory of Selborne,' gives an account of a bird, of which the lion.
and Rev. W. Herbert says, in a note to White's Selborne,' 1833, saw this cnrioua bird stuffed in the collection of the Earl of Egrcumnt at Petworth, and I have not the slightest hesitation in pronouncing that it was a mule, between the black cock and the common pheasant. I (lid not entertain the slightest doubt on the subject : 31r. Markwick's suggestion that the bird may be an old pea-hen is very weak. 1 le might as well have said an ostrich. Neither in size, shape, nor colour had the bird the least affinity to a pealowl. I can also most posi tively assert that this bird was not, as suggested in a note (p. 343), a hen pheasant with the feathers of a cock. Such birds are well known to me, and it noways resembled them. To Mr. White's description of the bird above, where he says that the back, wing-feathers, and tail were somewhat like the upper parts of a hen partridge, I scratched out at the time the words somewhat like,' and wrote in the margin much browner than,' and with that correction I believe Mr. White's description to be quite correct." Notwithstanding Mr. Herbert's opinion, Mr. Yarrell has stated his conviction that the hybrid grouse of White's Natural History of Selborne ' to be a young Black-Cock having nearly completed his first moult.
Of undoubted cases of hybrids arising from a mixture with the Gray Hen, the following are related.
At a meeting of the Zoological Society on the 24th of June, 1834, Mr. Sabine called the attention of the meeting to a specimen of a hybrid bird between the Common Pheasant (Phasiunus Colehieus, Linn.) and the Gray Hen (Tetrao tetrix, Linn.), which was exhibited. Its legs were partially feathered ; it bore on the shoulder a white spot ; and its middle tail-feathers were lengthened. Mr. Sabine stated his intention of entering at some length into the history of hybrid and cross animals in connection with his description of this bird, which was bred in Cornwall. This bird was a male.
On the 12th of May, 1835, at a meeting of the same society was read Some Account of a Hybrid Bird between the Cock Pheasant (Phasianus Colehieus, Linn.) and Gray Hen „(Tetrao tetrix, Linn.), by Thomas C. Eyton, Esq.' This paper was illustrated by the exhi bition of the preserved skin of the bird, and also of a drawing made. from it.
The subjoined table shows some comparative measurements between the hybrid bird in question (the Cock Pheasant) and the Gray Hen :— The late Mr. W. Thompson, of Belfast, has also described a hybrid of this kind that was shot in Wigtonshire (`Mag. ZooL and Bot.' vol. i.). Mr. Yarrell, in the second volume of his British Birds,' has also recorded other instances.