GROUSE IN SURREY
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I notice in the Country Life page of your issue of August 9th Sir William Beach Thomas says " Time was when there was grouse in Surrey." Does Sir William mean the Scotch red grouse or the black grouse or black game ? I have lived for many years not very far away from the large commons 'which cover the Kingsley, Wolmer and Hindhead district, and, while I have often heard traditions of black game having existed, I have never heard of red grouse having been found there.
Gilbert White says in his Natural History of Selborne that the black grouse were extinct ie his time. He says that the "last. pack had been seen about 85 years before he wrote." Kelsall in his Birds of Hampshire says " They were re-intro. duped to Wolmer Forest by Sir Charles Taylor, then ranger of the forest, from Cumberland," and Harting in his edition of White's Natural History of Sclborne says " till 1872 an old man was still living at Liphook who had brought these birds to Wollner," and also Captain Fielden found a good many there in 1872. Also, in the Memoir of Charles St. John, the author of Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands, by the Revd. M. G. Watkins (published 1893), he mentions that St. John used to drive out of London to shoot black cock and return the same day in about 1828. This, I suppose, would be in the Hindhead district, and as they were extinct in Gilbert White's time, these would, I suppose, be the descendants of the birds introduced by Sir Charles Taylor.
About 1899, Major Cowie, who had been in charge of the 'Wollner Forest, told Dr. Bawdier Sharpe that he believed they were then quite extinct in the district and I have heard a local tradition that they were finally destroyed by a series of forest fires that took place in the nesting season. No exact date has been given me but, from other details told me at the 'Rune time, I should imagine that it would be somewhere about the 1880's, but I have never heard of any tradition of the red grouse having existed in the district. I shall be very interested to hear whether Sir 'William Beach Thomas has any details of these. Gilbert White also had sent to him by Lord Stawell a hybrid bird which he did not identify with certainty, but which is now always considered to have been a cross between a pheasant and a black cock, and a coloured plate of this bird appears in the 1802 edition of the Natural History of Selborne, presumably from the painting of Mr. Elmer of Farnham that White mentions, So it looks as though there were still a few black game left in the district in White's time, though he thought they were
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