Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/214

186 society of its fellows, in the old grey church tower, the ruined castle, the beetling cliffs, the comfortable stack of chimneys, yet there was an old hollow ash tree in one of our fields which at different times was tenanted by a solitary pair: they were all destroyed in succession, but the epithet of "the daw's tree" recorded the simple tale, till it, in its turn, fell by the hand of man.

The Red Grouse. On Monday, January 17th, 1842, I heard of a most remarkable deviation from the usual habits of its species, in the case of a female red grouse, a bird, the very mention of whose name recals to memory the brown heath, and its bold challenge from the hill side. Familiar as I have been for many years past with their habits, I should have been the last to imagine that in any instance one of this species would voluntarily leave its native haunts, and take up its residence amongst drifting sand-hills, overgrown with bent grass (Agrostis), such as stretch along our coast from Whitberry Point to Scoughall Burn, about six miles as the crow flies, from the nearest heath-clad slope of the Lammermoors. It was here that a solitary female was seen in the winter of 1841; and in the following summer, Mr. Martine, gamekeeper to the Earl of Haddington, found her attended by a brood of young ones, which arrived at maturity, and frequented their native haunts for several months, till the whole were killed by poachers or otherwise disappeared. Having at different times, in all seasons and in all weathers, wandered in its usual haunts, I am enabled, in some measure, to appreciate the beautiful accuracy displayed in my friend Professor Macgillivray's account of its habits. From his long practical acquaintance with this bird in the Hebrides, where sand-hills, covered with bent, abound, there is some reason for inferring that perhaps the above-mentioned fact is unparalleled.

The Pheasant and Partridge. Every one is familiar with the parasitic habits of the cuckoo, but I dare say few have heard of a very anomalous proceeding on the part of the pheasant and partridge. My attention was first directed to it on the 8th of June, 1840, by a mower calling upon me to examine a nest from which he had just driven a female pheasant, and which contained seven partridge's eggs in addition to nine of her own. On mentioning the circumstance to the gamekeeper, he averred that it was not uncommon, his assistants corroborating the statement: Mr. W. Martine, a native of one of the midland counties of England, gamekeeper to Mrs. H.N. Ferguson of Biel, informed me that he had long known the fact, that it was by