for materials in the shape of a heap of bricklayer's mortar lay conveniently near, and these they appropriated to their own purposes without compunction.

I had all the old scene over again; but the second brood consisted only of three, instead of five. In the early part of autumn, when the days began to shorten, my swallows intimated their wish to commence their labours earlier in the day, and made such a clatter that I was fain to slip on my dressing-gown, and come down every morning at four or five o'clock, to open the halfdoor and allow their egress. The watching of these little creatures beguiled many a weary hour, and when they migrated to other lands for the winter, I was sorry to lose my tenants, never supposing that I should see them again. But I was mistaken; for they are here now. They came back at the usual season, and this year have reversed operations: first rearing three young ones in a new nest; while at the very time that I write (July 24th) there are again. five eggs towards a new "family pie" in the old cracked willowpattern dish, to which, or any other locality they may choose on my premises, I make them heartily welcome.

We cannot observe animate or inanimate nature, in any shape, without feeling new reverence for Him who taught the swallow where to find "a house for herself." But the doings of my bonny pets seemed to give me a lesson of perseverance also, and to advise me, when circumstances sometimes proves adverse, that, as they contented themselves with the cracked pie-dish instead of a handsome specimen of swallow architecture, I, too, must endeavour to be satisfied with, and make the best of, those blessings which my Heavenly Father has placed within my reach.

VARIETIES OF GROUSE.

THROUGHOUT the whole of winter, the shop of the London poulterer presents a Landseerian tableau, composed of groups of furred and feathered game, including water-fowl. Here hang rows of hares and leverets; there, too, are rabbits of the warren and also of the hutch, in files of long perspective. Festoons of birds are intermixed, or so arranged as to attract the eye. Groups of golden plovers and lapwigs, of woodcocks and snipes, are contrasted with partridges and pheasants; here and there a whimbrel, or a curlew, or a long-necked, spear-beaked heron, with flagging, motionless wings, and sometimes even a bittern, arrests the eye of the most incurious passenger. To these we may add the knot, the godwit, the dunlir, and others of the grallatorial or stilt-walking order, as occasional objects of exhibition.

Numerous, too, are the water-fowl. Not unfrequently is the noble wild swan exposed to sight-fit subject for the artist's pencil. The bean goose, the bernicle goose, and the brent goose, are far from being rare; while the wild duck, the shoveller, the widgeon, the teal, the pintail, and the pouchard, are always common, sometimes abundant.

But attractive as are the water-fowl, still more so are the birds of the mountain, the moorland, and the pine forest, generally included under the name of grouse. There hangs the magnificent capercailzie (Tetrao urogallus), there the bonny black cock (Tetrao tetrix), there the red grouse (Tetrao Scoticus), there the Scottish ptarmigan (Tetrao mutus), and there, in multitudes, the common Norwegian ptarmigan (Tetrao saliceti), of which tens of thousands are exported every winter from Norway and Sweden into the London markets.

What a scene, towards the end of December, does Leadenhall Market present! If our reader could form something like a conception of the multitude of game and wild-fowl sent from all parts to the metropolis, let him visit this great emporium early on some bright frosty morning, as soon as business commences. The sight will not disappoint his highest expectations, and often will a rare bird excite his interest.

It is to the grouse in particular that we would on the present occasion invite attention. Common as grouse of different species are-now to be seen in the poulterers' shops throughout the metropolis-there was a time, and that not many years ago, in which they were rare aves-to be seen occasionally, but never in such multitudes as they are in the present day. The railroad, the steamboat, and legal alterations with regard to the sale of game, have operated conjointly so as to facilitate and encourage its introduction as a marketable commodity, not only into the metropolis, but into our cities and larger towns generally. Thirty years ago, the red grouse and the black grouse were strange birds in London. They were received from the north as valuable presents, and not to be displayed at table under ordinary circumstances, but were reserved to grace a feast. The times have changed, and grouse may be purchased every day in the market or at the poulterer's, and are no longer rarities. This, perhaps, is all for the best; but, speaking for ourselves, we miss our regularlyexpected hamper of game, more acceptable by far than the cheapest lot which we could purchase at Leadenhall Market. If our reader has ever unpacked a hamper from the heather moorlands of the north, he will enter into our feelings.

A group of grouse is before us. The moor-game, or red grouse, first claims our notice. According to the opinion of ornithologists generally, the red grouse is confined exclusively to the British Islands; it is a native of the wild moorland districts, not only of

Scotland, where it is very abundant, but also of the northern and midland counties of England, Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, &c., as well as in those of North Wales. It is extensively spread over the hills and mountains of Ireland, and is, moreover, common in the Hebrides, and also in the Orkney Islands-a circumstance which might almost lead us to pause before receiving with entire credence the assertion that the species does not inhabit either Norway or Sweden.

The moor-game, or red grouse, does not affect, like the ptarmigan, the sterile rocky pinnacles of the bold mountain range, where in clefts and ravines the winter snow melts not till July; but contents itself with a lower elevation, where the heath-land stretches far into the distance, now swelling into massive crests, now sinking into winding valleys, glens, and ravines, and again sweeping up the sides of the mist-clad declivity to the very border line of summer snow and almost alpine barrenness. From this altitude it ranges to the corn lands reclaimed from the moor, and often have we received grouse, the crops of which have been filled with oats or rye. As a rule, it may be said that where, over extensive hilly moorlands, the ling or heather prevails, interrupted by wide patches of the bilberry, the red whortleberry, and the cranberry, there, unless driven from its asylum, the red grouse will be found in more or less abundance.

Like gallinaceous birds in general, the red grouse is fond of dusting its plumage in dry and sandy spots. On more than one occasion has the writer, while traversing the moorlands in the peak of Derbyshire, surprised a small flock of grouse thus engaged, in a track or by-road, and which, as he approached on horseback, leisurely took flight on whirring wing into the bordering covert of heather and vaccinium.

On the 12th of August grouse-shooting commences--in our

opinion somewhat too early; for though the early-bred birds of the year are strong upon the wing, yet there are many broods, hatched late in April, which are by no means so vigorous, and which indeed have not attained their full dimensions, the lower margin of the breastbone being yet in a cartilaginous condition, and the flesh deficient in true game flavour. On the 4th of September last, we sat to table with such a brace of grouse before us, shot on the Grampians. The backbone had its usual bitterness, but not in haut goût, and the pectoral muscles were too soft and pallid.

As a rule, the red grouse pair in January and breed in March; the nest, if we can so call it, is composed of twigs of heather, wiry moorland grass (often cotton grass*), sometimes intermixed with a few feathers, or a little coarse sheep's wool. Often in Derbyshire have we seen this rude bed, consisting merely of a small faggot of dried heath twigs, mixed, perhaps, with a few withered stems of grass. Sometimes this nest is placed under the deep covert of heather; but we have seen it amidst bilberry bushes, in patches of cotton grass, and occasionally in depressions surrounded by low herbage, such as wild thyme, &c., on the midway of the mountain. side. On this rude bed the female deposits her eggs, varying from 8 or 10 to 14 or 16 in number; they are acutely oval, of a darkly clouded umber-brown tint, having a greyish or reddish grey ground colour, largely smeared, blotched, and spotted with purplish umber, so that, except about the small end, little of the ground colour is fairly distinguishable. "The silent and secluded hours" of incubation belong exclusively to the female, but the male keeps his vigils around the spot, and as soon as the young brood

*In the moorlands of Derbyshire, the cotton-grass often grows in extensive patches, and, at a little distance, presents the appearance of a recent fall of snowflakes, each flake adhering, plume-like, to the summit of a wiry bent or grassstalk. The contrast with the heather is very pretty.