three exceptions. The first instance is that noticed by Professor Newton in his "Dictionary of Birds,"[1] when Baron Dickson succeeded in acclimatising the species near Gottenburg in Sweden; the second is that of its introduction in 1893-1894 to the Hohe Venn, a high tract of moorland on the borders of Belgium and Germany, south of Spa, where Red Grouse are still thriving; and the third the successful experiment on Lord Iveagh's property at Icklingham in Suffolk in 1903, where the birds, despite the necessity of an artificial water supply on the dry, sandy heaths, had increased in 1909, and appeared likely in 1910 to form a permanent colony. In the Hobe Venn district after two failures fifty pairs or more were liberated in August 1894, and by 1901 had increased to about a thousand head in spite of regular shooting. Professor Somerville of Oxford, who has kindly furnished particulars, saw the birds there in September 1910.
During the last twenty years it has been strongly borne in upon the general public, as well as sportsmen, that the welfare of the Grouse is an affair of national Economic
importance
of Grouse.interest; for game of every description is becoming less and less a luxury of the rich, and more and more a regular factor of our food supply, facts which cannot be ignored by the modern economist, and are now considered to be well within the province of the Government, which has at last consented to bestir itself in the matter.
Here I propose to give a brief account of the position of the Red Grouse in the class of birds. In nearly all linear systems of classification put forward by Classificationmodern systematists, whether they start from the highest or from the lowest forms of creation, the large order Galliformes — or its equivalent — stands about midway in the carinate or keel-breasted birds, being connected most closely on the one hand with the Falconiformes and Anseriformes, on the other with the Gruiformes and Charadriiformes. Its position is thus well ascertained, and no serious doubts have been raised as to its constituent members, except that the Tinamidæ (Tinamous) of South America, which have been sometimes included in it, are now by pretty general consent placed next to the Ratite birds, with keelless breastbone.
Under the order Galliformes may be placed in suborders the curious Mesites of Madagascar, the no less peculiar Opisthocomus or Hoatzin of northern South America, and the Old World Turnices (Button Quails) with their close ally Pedionomus; but the only suborder with which we are here concerned is that known by the name of Galli. Under the Galli, again, we need only make
- ↑ "Dictionary of Birds," p. 389
