But, if you want to see the Cock-o'-the woods in all his glory, you should visit him in the month of February, when the pine-tree boughs are yet bending beneath their load of snow. There he sits, high up, out of reach, with his neck outstretched, the feathers of his head erected like a crest, his tail expanded, and his wings drooping to his feet, uttering his love-call, which resembles Pelur, pelur, pelur! interrupted every now-and-then with a deep quek! which sounds like a chuckle far down in the throat. It is answered, by the hens within hearing, with a cry like the croak of a raven, or rather thus: Gock, gock, gock! and for some weeks the woods are rife with these unmusical sound; they then cease; the female commences preparing for her work of incubation; and the male skulks away, as if ashamed of himself, to hide in the leafy covert, and renew his plumage, which soon after begins to look dull and ragged. The two sexes consort not again until the next breeding season: on the hen devolves all the trouble of hatching and rearing the young. Her rude nest is placed on the ground, in some secluded situation; and there, on her eggs, from six to twelve in number, of a pale reddish brown, spotted over with two shades of deeper colour, she sits her appointed twenty-nine days, and leads forth her chicks-or poults we should call them, to be sportsmanlike-which run as soon as they are hatched, and feed on worms, ants, and other insects. The food of the old birds consists chiefly of the leaves and tender shoots of the Scotch fir, with juniper and other berries common in the northern forests: in the winter, they eat the buds of the birch, &c. Rarely or never, it is said, do they touch the spruce-fir.

Of capercalzie-shooting the British sportsman knows but little yet, although he may be better informed by-and-by, when the birds get sufficiently numerous to allow of their being shot in a fair manner. One of the modes by which they are taken in Sweden must be characterized as anything but fair: we should call it poaching. Having marked the places of retirement to roost, the destroyers go by torchlight, and shoot the birds at their leisure, as they sit stupidly staring at the fire blazing beneath them. On account of their size, weight, and heavy flight, we should imagine that they would be at all times an easy prey; and as their value in the market, being from ten to fifteen shillings, renders them a good prize, they will no doubt, unless carefully watched and preserved, again become scarce in the country, and eventually die out, as they have done before.

We must now leave the pine-woods of Strathmuir and the bonny birken shaws of Blair Athol and Dunkeld, to climb high up amid the realms of barren rock and everlasting snow. There we shall find the ptarmigan,

"Sitting in his home sublime,

High o'er cloudland's boundless sea.”

This is the Lagopus vulgaris of Flemming and some naturalists, the Tetrao lagopus of others. Selby and Gould call it L. mutus, from the remarkable change which takes place in the colour of the plumage, in accordance with the variation of the seasons. In summer, as Mr. Knox tells us in his admirable little book on "Game Birds and Wild Fowl," it presents a mixture of black, yellow, white, and grey, exactly resembling the colour of the mossy, lichen-covered rocks and stones where it lies

man.

concealed, and which, becoming gradually whiter as the season advances, at last nearly assimilates itself to the snows of winter." Thus the bird is often enabled to elude the pursuit of its natural enemies, as well as of The generic term Lagopus, applied to this and the red grouse, comes from the Greek, and signifies "hare-foot," these two species having their feet entirely covered with a thick, short plumage, like fur. This the black grouse and capercalzie have not, their feathers only extending to the first joint of the tarsi. This obvious distinction has caused Macgillivray to place the brown and grey ptarmigans, as the two species are often called, in a genus by themselves. The term "ptarmigan," we may observe, is but a slight modification of the Gaelic name tarmachan. The snow-covered peaks and bare rocks, far above the heathery region inhabited by its near relative, the red grouse, are the principal haunts of this bird; and he must be an ardent and a hardy sportsman who endures the toils and overcomes the difficulties of penetrating those Alpine solitudes, where scarcely another living creature is to be seen, except the mighty eagle, whose scream alone breaks the awful silence, or the grey hare, whose furry mantle undergoes a seasonable change of colour analogous to that of the plumage of the bird: Such, then, is the ptarmigan, once, as Pennant asserts, a dweller amid the hills of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and some other parts of England, but now not to be found at all south of the Grampians. The further north you go among the Highlands, the more plentiful does it become. It does not exist in Ireland; and, although once known in Wales, has not been seen there for at least half-a-century. It inhabits most Alpine regions of both the European and American continents, feeding on the tops of such plants as are to be found in those wild and desolate situations, and probably also on insects. As a table-bird, it is much inferior to the moorfowl, like which it is monogamous, and, to a certain extent, gregarious. "The packs," says Morris, in his handsome quarto on "British Game Birds and Wild Fowl," break up early in the spring, when pairing takes place; and the couples distribute themselves in situations suitable for their purpose."

Macgillivray describes the cry of the bird as similar to the croak of a frog; others have compared it to the harsh note of the missel thrush. The hen makes a very rude kind of nest, of a few twigs, coarse grass, or sedge it is not easily found, being placed under some large stone, or stunted bush, or tuft of mountain herbage. The eggs are yellowish or greenish white, blotched and spotted with dark brown: they vary in number from eight to fourteen. The young run about as soon as they are hatched, and evince great sagacity in the selection of hiding-places.

The ptarmigan has never been known to breed in confinement: it pines for the freedom of the hills, and soon dies if subject to restraint. It is the smallest of our native grouse; and with us, except the capercalzie, the least plentiful. That it is, however, very abundant in Norway and Sweden, we may judge from the fact that a salesman in Leadenhall Market has received as many as 15,000 at one consignment from those countries. The usual price of the bird, in the market of Drammen, is 4d.: here it fetches 2s.

There is a bird called the rock ptarmigan (by naturalists, Rupestris). which it seems likely is identical with the common species, in one of its varieties of costume; and this brings us to the end of the grouse

family. Our readers, we imagine, will think the space well occupied if we conclude this chapter with the following fine lines by "Delta," of Blackwood's Magazine:

TO A WOUNDED PTARMIGAN,

There is hardly anything about which more has been said, or less read, than about shooting. And the reason of this disparity, perhaps, is, because the general run of ramrod writers say nothing new that is true; and of that which is really quite true, there is much that is clearly not at all new. So, when long yarns are exhibited either to ear or to eye, a man who knows what he is about-a man who really knows, and by actual practice, all about shooting-naturally enough rebels against being bored with the imbecilities of mere scribblers and talkers. It is all Hookey HAWKER to him. He has had enough of the notorious Colonel's treatise, and more than enough of the twaddle cuckooed by the Colonel's copyists. But, whatever may be the cause of people's not liking to be indoctrinated with talk about shooting, or why we all are apt to revolt against being drugged with theses in print upon the subject, the fact itself (as just stated) is unquestionable. We all know that every man, almost, has a "book in him" on shooting; and what we fear is, that it will come out of him -all over us. Is this instinctive horror of the sayings of good shots always perfectly rational? I think not; and I will tell you why. In the first place, gossip is good, in its way, whether it be about shooting or about anything else that is manly and sporting. In the next place, a man who writes or talks to us honestly, and without disagreeable dogmatism, about any sporting subject (whatever it may be), deserves to be listened to, even if his readers are obliged to dissent from some of his opinions. Besides, although we may hear nothing new (as is generally the case, and the objection), what we hear or read, nevertheless, may be agreeable gossip enough, especially to those who are not tyros, who are not boys, and who don't want to be taught how to take the field and bag the birds, as if they had a gun in their hands for the first time in their lives. When a

clever contributor (and there is more than one such) to these pages gives us the results of his experience as a sportsman in the shooting season, we prize the "wrinkles" as pearls of wisdom, because they are the pearls of a practical hand, masterly strung together, and cleverly investing the whole string with all the life and spirit of which the subject is susceptible....To the sportsman, time flows away smoothly, through delicious scenes and pleasant places--now through fields and where corn was, then through fields where turnips are, through the mossy moor and the wild forest, the lofty hills and the smiling valleys, the old woods and the new preserves; the firmament above bright, delight everywhere, and the birds....But we must not say anything about the birds; for if I once begin, Jove only knows when and where I shall stop.

THE PARK, PARK-HORSES, ETC.

ay,

About six o'clock the Park, in the season (as, of course, every countrified cousin knows), gets pretty full. I have seen a good many seasons; and I don't remember one in which wealth and luxury have glittered more agreeably or less ostentatiously than in that one which is just ended. I allude to the equipages generally; but the aliquid amari must have arisen to many a man besides myself, upon whose brow Time tells of four-in-hand. Four-in-hand turn-outs, however, I suppose, though, were very seldom driven in the Park, whatever may have been the case on the road to Bedfonteven before one-horse broughams and the other cruelty-cart-like innovations of these modern times, in which making money, setting beggars on horseback, and rendering homage to railway kings and swindling bankers, are the ordinary things of the day. And what a legion of parvenus prance about the Park now! To every Jew, jobbing, low-looking unit that one used to see formerly, a hundred and eighty, at least, present themselves now, as the representatives of what politicians politely call "progress." Progress! a pretty piece of progress, this turning things topsy-turvy!

As to the horses, I think I never saw so many horses that one likes the look of, precisely because they are not park-horses; and, for obvious reasons, the Ride never had in it so large a number of Arab horses, with their short, mean quarters, hatchet-like necks, satin coats, and corky elasticity of step.

With regard to the men, there certainly are not seen now nearly so many heavy weights-a result, possibly, of a diminution in the number of post-prandial bottles of port drunk in these degenerate days of claret and French fashions. A full-waistcoated fellow, I suppose, will soon be as rarely met with as a good fellow; and corpulence will be confined almost exclusively to the turtle-fed celebrities of the city of London. But, after all, my notion-and it is nothing more-that there are not so many heavy weights now as formerly, may be quite wrong.

THE SPORTING PAPERS.

I am old enough to remember perfectly well so far back as the starting of all the sporting papers. Each and every start (a matter

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