just at the present moment the poor black grouse are generally having a hot time of it. after their quiet spring and summer they suddenly find their heath-clad wastes invaded by a strange epidemic of men, dogs, and hideous shooting implements; and being as yet but young and inexperienced, they are falling victims by the thousand to their youthful habit of clinging closely for protection to the treacherous reed-beds. a little later in the season, those of them that survive will have learned more wary ways: they will pack among the juniper thickets, and become as cautious on the approach of perfidious man as their cunning cousins, the red grouse of the scottish moors. but so far youthful innocence prevails; no sentinels as yet are set to watch for the distant gleam of metal, and no foreshadowing of man's evil intent disturbs their minds as they feed in fancied security upon the dry seeds of the marsh plants in their favourite sedges.
the great families of the pheasants and partridges, in which the blackcock must be included, may be roughly divided into two main divisions so far as regards their appearance and general habits. the first class consists of splendidly coloured and conspicuous birds, such as the peacock, the golden pheasant, and the tragopan; and these are, almost without exception, originally jungle-birds of tropical or sub-tropical lands, though a few of them have been acclimatised or domesticated in temperate countries. they live in regions where they have few natural enemies, and where they are little exposed to the attacks of man. most of them feed more or less upon fruits and bright-coloured food-stuffs, and they are probably every one of them polygamous in their habits. thus we can hardly doubt that the male birds, which alone possess the brilliant plumage of their kind, owe their beauty to the selective preference of their mates; and that the taste thus displayed has been aroused by their relation to their specially gay and bright natural surroundings. the most lovely species of pheasants are found among the forests of the himalayas and the malay archipelago, with their gorgeous fruits and flowers and their exquisite insects. even in england our naturalised oriental pheasants still delight in feeding upon blackberries, sloes, haws, and the pretty fruit of the honeysuckle and the holly; while our dingier partridges and grouse subsist rather upon heather, grain, and small seeds. since there must always be originally nearly as many cocks as hens in each brood, it will follow that only the handsomest or most attractive in the polygamous species will succeed in attracting to them a harem; and as beauty and strength usually go hand in hand, they will also be the conquerors in those battles which are universal with all polygamists in the animal world. thus we account for the striking and conspicuous difference between the peacock and the peahen, or between the two sexes in the pheasant, the turkey, and the domestic fowl.
on the other hand, the second class consists of those birds which are exposed to the hostility of many wild animals, and more especially of man. these kinds, typified by the red grouse, partridges, quails, and guinea-fowls, are generally dingy in hue, with a tendency to pepper-and-salt in their plumage; and they usually display very little difference between the sexes, both cocks and hens being coloured and feathered much alike. in short, they are protectively designed, while the first class are attractive. their plumage resembles as nearly as possible the ground on which they sit or the covert in which they skulk. they are thus enabled to escape the notice of their natural enemies, the birds of prey, from whose ravages they suffer far more in a state of nature than from any other cause. we may take the ptarmigans as the most typical example of this class of birds; for in summer their zigzagged black-and-brown attire harmonises admirably with the patches of faded heath and soil upon the mountain-side, as every sportsman well knows; while in the winter their pure white plumage can scarcely be distinguished from the snow in which they lie huddled and crouching during the colder months. even in the brilliant species, mr. darwin and mr. wallace have pointed out that the ornamental colours and crest are never handed down to female descendants when the habits of nesting are such that the mothers would be exposed to danger by their conspicuousness during incubation. speaking broadly, only those female birds which build in hollow trees or make covered nests have bright hues at all equal to those of the males. a female bird nesting in the open would be cut off if it showed any tendency to reproduce the brilliant colouring of its male relations.
now the blackcock occupies to some extent an intermediate position between these two types of pheasant life, though it inclines on the whole to that first described. it is a polygamous bird, and it differs most conspicuously in plumage from its consort, the grey-hen, as may be seen from the very names by which they are each familiarly known. yet, though the blackcock is handsome enough and shows evident marks of selective preference on the part of his ancestral hens, this preference has not exerted itself largely in the direction of bright colour, and that for two reasons. in the first place the blackcock does not feed upon brilliant foodstuffs, but upon small bog-berries, hard seeds, and young shoots of heather, and it is probable that an ?sthetic taste for pure and dazzling hues is almost confined to those creatures which, like butterflies, hummingbirds, and parrots, seek their livelihood amongst beautiful fruits or flowers. in the second place, red, yellow, or orange ornaments would render the blackcock too conspicuous a mark for the hawk, the falcon, or the weapons of man; for we must remember that only those blackcocks survive from year to year and hand down their peculiarities to descendants which succeed in evading the talons of birds of prey or the small-shot of sportsmen. feeding as they do on the open, they are not protected, like jungle-birds, by the shade of trees. thus any bird which showed any marked tendency to develop brighter or more conspicuous plumage would almost infallibly fall a victim to one or other of his many foes; and however much his beauty might possibly charm his mates (supposing them for the moment to possess a taste for colour), he would have no chance of transmitting it to a future generation. accordingly, the decoration of the blackcock is confined to glossy plumage and a few ornamental tail-feathers. the grey-hen herself still retains the dull and imitative colouring of the grouse race generally; and as for the cocks, even if a fair percentage of them is annually cut off through their comparative conspicuousness as marks, their loss is less felt than it would be in a monogamous community. every spring the blackcock hold a sort of assembly or court of love, at which the pairing for the year takes place. the cocks resort to certain open and recognised spots, and there invite the grey-hens by their calls, a little duelling going on meanwhile. during these meetings they show off their beauty with great emulation, after the fashion with which we are all familiar in the case of the peacock; and when they have gained the approbation of their mates and maimed or driven away their rivals, they retire with their respective families. unfortunately, like most polygamists, they make bad fathers, leaving the care of their young almost entirely to the hens. according to the veracious account of artemus ward, the great brigham young himself pathetically descanted upon the difficulty of extending his parental affections to 131 children. the imperious blackcock seems to labour under the same sentimental disadvantage.
