NOTES ON SPORT. 77 as do the willow-grouse in that country in the same latitudes. The ptarmigan there, however, take their young ones, as soon as they are able to flutter, up to the summits of the fjelds, while in Iceland the birds, which the author believes to be hybrids, conduct their young families down to the low-lying tracts and less elevated moors. The willow-grouse in Arctic Norway are never found on the mountainous fjelds; but the hybrid birds of Iceland, when it happens that their plumage becomes light-coloured before the low- lying grounds are covered with snow, ascend to the snow-line of the mountains, and, broadly speaking, are only to be found there at such times. The exception is when the moors, where the birds have been in August, lie in the vicinity of lava-beds, for in that case many of the birds seek shelter among the rugged, piled-up and distorted masses of igneous rock. In August last year (1881) the moors around Ijosavatn, about 500 feet above sea-level, were alive with grouse; in September not a bird was to be shot on them, nor on the neighbouring fjelds at a less elevation than 2,000 feet, where there were patches of snow. This looks as if the willow-grouse instinct surviving in the hybrids teaches them that better and more palatable food is to be found on the low-lands, so they go there, while the surviving ptarmigan instinct teaches them that when their plumage begins to lighten there is greater safety on the snow-clad mountains, than on the ‘ bonny brown moors ’ and in among the scrub, so they do what the true willow-grouse never do as far north in Norway, betake themselves to the mountains. Here they remain, following the snow-line downward until the plains are covered with snow, when they seek sheltered low-lying localities. The question will not be entered into more fully here, a guide- book being hardly the proper place to discuss it; and the reader of ornithological tastes is referred to ‘The Field’ of the 5th July, 1879, where, in a short paper entitled ‘Notes on Iceland,’ the author entered into it somewhat fully; and, it appears, proved to the satisfaction of the Icelandic ornithologists the existence of three varieties, for this is now pretty generally admitted by them to be the case, though in 1878 it was denied. At that time but one variety was recognised, and it was a disputed point whether the Icelandic bird was identical or not with either of the Norwegian ryper; and stuffed specimens in the Museum at Reykjavik were labelled Tetrao Islandicus. However, what the author has written here will be of service to sportsmen, as it shows where, under certain conditions, they are likely to find grouse.

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