buff-barred type, and the females from Yorkshire were all rather of the buff-barred type, but none of these birds had quite the same markings as the Irish example. See Pl. x., female Grouse, in full summer plumage, Scottish buff-barred type.
Pl. xviii., xx., xxi., and xxii. represent abnormal varieties of the Red Grouse, and are drawn from specimens in the British Museum (Natural History). They are described in the explanation of the plates.
Two points in connection with the practical distinction of old Grouse from young, and of cock Grouse from hens, are of perennial interest both to Method of
ascertaining
sex. the gamekeeper and to the sportsman. No discussion is more apt to produce different opinions than that which arises upon the age or the sex of Grouse in certain stages of moulting, either at the luncheon-hour upon the moor or in the game-larder when the day's bag has been overhauled, and hung upon the hooks. It must be admitted that there are individual cases occurring not rarely, in which it is almost impossible to tell the sex until the bird has been cut open and the internal anatomy examined. In these doubtful cases the only way to settle the point is to cut the bird open down the middle of the abdomen, carefully turn over the whole of the intestines from the right to the left — that is,
from the bird's left side to the bird's right side — without tearing the attachments, and then, having exposed to view the flattened reddish kidneys which lie closely packed into the inequalities of the backbone and pelvis, to see whether an ovary or a testis is revealed overlying the uppermost portion of them.
In the breeding season, and in a breeding bird, there can be no doubt whatever as to the sex, for the ovary is a conspicuous bunch of more or Ovaries
and testes.
less developed ova in the hen; and in the cock the testis is a conspicuous round, white object as large as the kernel of a good-sized hazel-nut on each side of the backbone.
There is but one ovary, and it lies always on the left side of the backbone of the bird. There arc two testes, one lying on each side of the backbone, the left one generally at a slightly lower level than the right. This development of the ovary only on one, the left side, is the reason for advising the examination to be made as described above, on the left side always. One testis or the ovary cannot then be missed.
If the bird examined thus is not breeding, as may often be the case
