genera than one. It is so
extensively present over the northern hemisphere, that Siberia, Norway,
Iceland, and North America, have all their grouse,--the latter
continent, indeed, from five to eight different kinds; and yet so
restricted are some of the species of which they consist, that, were the
British islands to be submerged, one of the best known of the
family,--the red grouse, or moor-fowl (_Lagopus Scoticus_),--would
disappear from creation. This bird, which, rated at its money value, is
one of the most important in Europe,--for the barren moors which it
frequents in the Highlands of Scotland alone are let every season almost
entirely for its sake for hundreds of thousands of pounds,--is
exclusively a British bird; and, unless by miracle a new migratory
instinct were given to it, a complete submersion of the British islands
would secure its destruction. If the submergence amounted to but a few
hundred miles in lateral extent, the moor-fowl would to a certainty not
seek the distant uninundated land. Nor is it at all to be inferred, that
in a merely local but wide spread deluge, birds occupying a more
extensive area than that overspread by the Flood would, according to Dr.
Kitto, "speedily replenish the inundated tract as soon as the waters had
subsided." The statement must have been hazarded in ignorance of the
peculiar habits of many of the non-migratory birds. Up till about the
middle of the last century, the capercailzie, or great cock of the
woods, was a native of Scotland. It was exterminated, however, about the
time of the last Rebellion, or not long after: the last specimen seen
among the pine forests of Strathspey was killed, it is said, in the year
1745: the last specimen seen among the woods of Strathglass survived
till the year 1760. Pennant relates that he saw in 1769 a specimen,
probably a stuffed one, that had been killed shortly before in the
neighborhood of Inverness. But from at least that time the species
disappeared from the British islands; and, though it continued to exist
in Norway, did not "replenish the tracts from which it had been
extirpated." The late Marquis of Breadalbane was at no small cost and
trouble in re-introducing the species, and to some extent he succeeded;
but the capercailzie is, I understand, still restricted to the
Breadalbane woods. I have seen the golden eagle annihilated as a species
in move than one district of the north of Scotland; nor, though it still
exists in ot