of Felton, and having been sent to Twizell, I was not only
immediately made acquainted with the occurrence, but Mr.
Selby has since supplied me with a coloured drawing of the
bird, from which the representation at p. 811 was executed.
Hybrids between the Black and the Red Grouse have
been suspected, and in many parts of this country both species
inhabit -the, same ground; but siich a union is less likely
to happen with species that pair in their season, as do the
Red Grouse, than with those which, like the Pheasant, the
Capercaillie, and the Black Grouse, do not pair. Mr. Mac-
gillivray, in the first volume ,of his History of British Birds,
Indigenous and Migratory, page 162, has, however, mentioned
three, describing in detail one bird supposed to have
been thus produced. This bird is,_I believe, in the. collection
at the Edinburgh Museum.
In Sweden there are two species of Ptarmigan; one of
them, identical with the Ptarmigan of this country, inhabits
the mountains, and is. called by M. Nilsson in consequence,
a lp in a : the other a larger bird, which' inhabits the plains
and valleys, is called by M. Nilsson subalpina. With this
latter species hybrids have behn produced with the Black
Grouse, but these seem to be .exceedingly rare. M. Nilsson
appears t o ' have seen five -examples, ,one o f which being
figured in his coloured illustrations of the Fauna of Scandinavia,
I am enabled to insert a representation o f this
prettily-marked bird. In a letter lately received from T.
Macpherson Grant, Esq. of Edinburgh, that, gentleman says,
“ When in Norway last summer, I saw, preserved at Christiania,
several specimens of hybrids between the Black Cock
and the Capercailzie, -a circumstance said to be of not very
uncommon occurrence;; I saw also in Mr. Eskmark’s collection
a specimen of hybrid betwixt the Black Cock and the
Ptarmigan, but which he told me was extremely rare.”
M. Nilsson mentions an instance where the Black Cock
had been known to breed with the Barn-door F owl, but the
chicks, very unfortunately, only survived a few days.
In the adult male the beak, is black ; the irides dark
brown ; semilunar patch of naked skin over the 'eye bright
scarlet ; the feathers of the head, neck, back, wing-coverts,
rump, and tail, black ; those of the neck and back margined
with shining bluish black ; the primary quill-feathers black,
with white shafts ; the secondaries and tertials black at the
end, but white at the b'àlèV forming- a conspicuous white
bar below the'ends of the great’wing-coverts, which, with
the lesser coverts, are black ; the feathers of the spurious
wing with white spots at the basé ; tail of eighteen black
feathers* of which three, four, and sometimes five of those
on the outside are elongated, and curve outwards ; the others
nearly equal in length, and square at the e n d t h e chin,