BRITISH GAME BIRDS.

_1k4 N addition to the number of books in which Mr. J. G. Millais deals with the birds and beasts of his native country is an event for naturalists and shooting-men. No other author of our time, at once writer and artist, has had the same skill in putting together and the same opportunities of producing such a series as "British Deer and their Horns," "The Natural History of British Surface-Feeding Ducks," "The Mammals of Great Britain and Ire]and," and the volume just issued, "The Natural History of British Game Birds" (Longmans and Co., 28 8s. net). The latest addition is certainly more than worthy of its company already on the shelves. Indeed, as illustrated books continue to be produced, there seems to be more and more scope offered, if not to the author, at all events to the artist and the printer. "British Game Birds" is as sumptuous a pro- duction as such a book well could be. The illustrations are partly photogravures and partly coloured plates, both on a large scale, and as regards the latter, mostly reproducing the work of Mr. Archibald Thorburn. Mr. Millais tells us that he has discovered a new process of colour-reproduction which is a method "of direct transmission on to a. pure paper of lasting quality. None of the artist's touches, how- ever minute, are lost, nor do other hands mutilate the original picture in course of transmission." It is no doubt a wonderful improvement on the usual three-colour process, though for our part we continue to prefer the photogravure or the engraving in black-and-white even to the latest and most ingenious colour process. Something, somewhere, in the best colour process is still lacking. It is distinct, accurate, faithful as a mirror is faithful, and yet, perhaps still like a mirror, there is a bright, exact hardness in its reproduction which will not make a picture.

Mr. Millais's method as a naturalist could hardly be more painstaking or comprehensive. He has the eye to see and the pencil to set down what he sees, but beyond that he has the inexhaustible patience which alone can help a naturalist to be witness of so much that his fellow-men never see at all, or, seeing, do not understand. He collects evidence on difficult or doubtful points from writers and observers of all classes, from working gamekeepers to naturalists of standing and authority, and he adds to his collection his own original observations, often the first recorded in regard to particular points. Take, for example, his examination into the question of the breeding plumage of the red grouse. To begin with, how many naturalists could say offhand whether the red grouse in the breeding season undergoes any change of plumage at all Mr. Millais wrote to Mr. Rimington- Wilson, of Broomhead Hall, Sheffield, for instance, on the point, and quotes his answer as typical of answers -he has received from men who might be expected to know much about grouse. "I have spent any life on the moor edge," Mr. Rimington-Wilson wrote, and I am ashamed to say I do not know.* However, be and others of Mr. Millaas's friends set to work to help him to solve the question in a practical manner, and between February letb and July 1st this year Mr. Millais received over fifty freshly killed cocks, whose plumage he examined. As the result, he

has been able to establish the fact that the cock grouse, oan. trary to beliefs hitherto held by other naturalists, doss assume

a distinct breeding dress, which is not to be confused with the autumn moult that begins about June 18th every year. The chan,4e from the dark winter dress begins about March 24th, and consists in a. development of the comb, a

richer red suffusing the red feathers (this enrichment being due to repigmentation owing to the bird earning into high condition), and in a growth of brilliant new bIstek and yellow feathers about the crown, cheeks, and throat. That is the general rule, though variations have been noted in single specimens. Two birds, for instance, one from the Duke of Devonshire's moors at Buxton in Derbyshire, and the other

from Rroomhead Moor, were found early in May with new rich black and yellow feathers coming an the neck, back, and scapulars, and in one case on the breast. Then, on June 18th,

begins the full autumn moult, and the cock grouse, like the mallard drakes and others, assumes an "eclipse" plumage which gradually gives way to the full winter dress.

Some of the best things in the book deal with game birds nesting. To those who have the privilege of visiting

ptarmig,au ground in the breeding season Mr. Millais gives

a hint worth knowing. He himself searched in vain for hours for a ptermigan's nest, until an old keeper told him to search only a limit of two hundred yards square from the point where

the cock bird rose. He was then immediately successful, and

found three nests in one morning. "Two hundred yards square," by the way, is a little difficult to measure. " Some- where within seven or eight yards of where the bird rose," ought, perhaps, to mean nearly the same thing. One of the difficulties in finding the nest, apart from the plumage of the bird, which is almost exactly the colour of its surroundings, is that the hen bird sits extraordinarily close. Mr. Millais gives an instance of a naturalist who sought vainly for a. ptarmigan's nest, and then found the nest between the legs of his pony as the lunch was being repacked. A second nest

was discovered through the same naturalist's dog sitting down upon the sitting bird.

Another bird particularly interesting at the season of

courtship and nesting is the capercailzie. The hen sits pretty close; "that is to say, she will permit an interview at

12 feet"; but it is a pity to flush her from her nest, as she rises with a flurry and very likely breaks some of her eggs, or knocks them out of the nest. The choice of the "caper" as regards a site for nesting is wonderfully consistent; she nearly always prefers the shelter of an old fir or larch, often when the tree is leaning or uprooted, and she will nest within a few feet of a keepers lodge or a dog-kennel. When a brood of "capers" has been 'hatched, the-eggs are nearly always found broken exactly in the centre, and the halves placed one inside the other. But the best thing to watch in the nesting season is the cock capereailzie in his leve-making. He flies to his favourite "show" tree, or " spel " tree as it is called on the Continent, and begins to show off to his admiring hens just as dawn is breaking :—

"When in the act of the display the male stretches out the neck, spreads the tail, and lowers the wings, and utters a note something like the words klick-kleck,' repeated with intervals. It then turns the head upwards and backwards, uttering a variety of extra- ordinary noises or squalls, more like two cats fighting at a distance than anything else. During the performance of the culmination of his display, the bird seems to be thrown into a kind of ecstasy of excitement, said to be quite oblivious to all sounds or move- ments in its immediate neighbourhood. Soon after dawn the hens arrive, and run about in some excitement on the open sward near the foot of the 'spa!' tree."

Mr. Millais has not himsalf witnessed really serious battles between cock eapercailzie, but he has heard descriptions of them from gamekeepers. In one, the keeper saw two pairs fighting, and after they had skirmished a little, the contest became "a general melee of utter savagery devoid of skill."

One bird would catch hold of the neck of another and drag it about, shaking with fury. The fight ended only with the

complete exhaustion of the combatants. The Duke of Atboll's keeper at Dunkeld, indeed, has told Mr. Millais that he picks up two or three dead warriors every spring.

Considering the very large influence which the introduction of Hungarian partridges has had on the native stock of the country during the last few years, Mr. Atillsis has, rather curiously, little to say about the subject. He remarks merely that the importation of Hungarian birds is valuable, but that

it is quite possible to turn out Hungarians year after year without effecting a change of blood. "These imported birds," he writes, "almost invariably select mates from their Own coveys." As regards this point, the author of an interesting little brochure just published, "The Partridge Manor All the Year Round" (Elerbert Page, Hertford, is.), advises that the cocks should be separated from the hens, and that the birds should be released in twos and threes in different parts of the estate. They will then pair with the native birds. All observers agree that it is im- possible to pair off partridges compulsorily ; they simply will not pair unless they please. "Every keeper is aware," a head- keeper writes in "The Partridge Manor," "that you can pen a cock and hen partridge as long as you like, but for making them mate, that is another matter. Partridges naturally fall in love with each other, no other term is applicable, and they might be owl and duck mated for all the good the result would be otherwise." Ducks, Mr. Millais has noted, are equally particular. He has "seen ten teal or ten mallard in pens separated by a wire enclosure, and has noticed that certain drakes will have nothing to do with the ducks in their own pen, being quite insensible to the advances of others which are contiguous and desire to make love to them. The two that have taken a fancy to each other will it for hours side by side against the wire, gazing upon each other and whispering soft nothings." These natural choices, Mr. Millais advises, should be respected and encouraged ; and indeed that is the obvious and natural course. But, especially with Hungarian partridges, birds have often before now been expected to mate anyhow, as their owner pleased, and the result has only been what might have been expected,— disappointment and no young birds.