Grouse

“ The grouse is larger than the partridge, and, when full grown, weighs from twenty to two-and-twenty ounces. The plumage is variegated, and beautifully composed of black, red, and white; the tail being similar to that of the partridge, but a little larger when extended in flight.
The GROUSE perseveringly adhere to those mountains and moors which are covered with heath, seldom or ever descending into the lower grounds. They fly in packs, consisting of four or five brace; and indulge upon intervening tracts of soft mossy ground, particularly in the hotter months of the year. ”

“ GROUSE.—These birds are divided into wood grouse, black grouse, red grouse, and white grouse. The wood grouse is further distinguished as the cock of the wood, or capercalzie, and is as large as the turkey, being about two feet nine inches in length, and weighing from twelve to fifteen pounds. The female is considerably less than the male, and, in the colour of her feathers, differs widely from the other. This beautiful species is found principally in lofty, mountainous regions, and is very rare in Great Britain ”

“ The grouse have taken to bud-eating from necessity—birch buds mostly, with occasional trips to the orchards for variety. They live much now in the trees, which they dislike; but with a score of hungry enemies prowling for them day and night, what can a poor grouse do?
When a belated snow falls, you follow their particular enemy, the fox, where he wanders, wanders, wander's on his night's hunting. Across the meadow, to dine on the remembrance of field mice—alas! safe now under the crust; along the brook, where he once caught frogs; through the thicket, where the grouse were hatched ”

“ Blood and feathers may soon be strewn around the ground, for in the spring grouse will fight as fiercely as game-cocks. Sportsmen in the autumn woods {242} often hear grouse drumming at the old stand, merely from excess of vigour and not because they take the slightest interest then in a mate. ”

“ It has the property of making all things look a little ghostly, deepening the shadows and altering their values, so that all that you see seems to acquire an extra significance, not so much to the eye as to the mind. Slowly I retraced my steps, walking under the high wall of rough piled stones till it ends, at the copse of willows, on the north side of the little moor to which I had seen the pack of grouse fly after it had left the stooks. ”

“ The valleys were filled with freshness, and the air was balmy with scents, while every bird and beast rejoiced with the vigor of the spring. Now and then a blue grouse broke out drumming from the summit of a stately fir, white-headed 155 eagles and fish-hawks wheeled screaming above the frothing shallows on slanted wing, and silently, like flitting shadows, the little wood-deer leaped across the trail, or amid a crash of undergrowth a startled black bear charged in blind panic through the dim recesses of the bush. ”

“ Sprays of trembling foliage droop or stretch themselves out over the stream in search of the fine dew it sends up. They seem endeavoring to hide the broad scar made through the forest. The clear sun illuminates their green leaves, and makes the cool rocks emit a sensible warmth. It also illuminates the little fountains of water. Ferns and young willows shoot from crevices, delicate mosses attach themselves to the grim bowlders. I found the perfect print of a human foot sunk in the hardest rock; also cavities as cleverly rounded as if pebbles had been taken from the granite. ”

“ Imagine, for a moment, that we are standing upon a ledge of moss-grown rocks, projecting from a red hill-side, and whose verge beetles over a foaming river, which swirls and rages amongst the uplifting crags, flashing with diamonds in its rush and impetuosity, and then, placid and almost waveless, creeping on through the gnarled old forest with a faint murmur, seeming like a huge serpent of silver asleep in the gushing sunshine. ”

“ Not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate moss—paths which look as if they were made by the free-will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen of the white-footed nymphs. ”

“ A deep lane, its banks a garden of ferns, its hedge matted with honeysuckle, and woven together with bryony, runs, winding along a side space of green, to the latch-gate, guarded by an enormous oak, its limbs now fast decaying, its rough bark grey with the perpetual snow of lichens, and here and there burnished with soft streaks of russet-coloured moss ”

“ Many a time I have traced streams of grass to their fresh fountains, where jets of tender foliage and bubbles of tinted flowers welled up from dark, rich earth, and flowed away, with a velvet rustle and a ripple like blown floss, to break and recoil and eddy against the dark shadows of a distant grove. ”

“ Down rushed the steep slopes to the plain, clad in the decaying leaf and mast of former years, and at the edges of these precipitous glades, or scattered at long intervals across them, great single trees emerged, the types and masters of the forest, their trunks, incomparably tall, and all their noble limbs, now thinly veiled by a departing leafage, drawn sharp, in black and silver, on the pale background of the chalk plain. ”

“ In every direction the woods. Not an opening of any kind offered the mind a breathing place under the free sky. Sometimes the pine groves,—vast, solemn, grand, with the patrician aloofness of the truly great; sometimes the hardwood,—bright, mysterious, full of life; sometimes the swamps,—dark, dank, speaking with the voices of the shyer creatures; sometimes the spruce and balsam thickets,—aromatic, enticing. ”

“ I saw you, golden and brown, in the afternoon sunshine to-day. Crisp leaves were falling, as I went along the foot-path through the woods: crisp leaves lie upon the green graves in the churchyard, fallen from the ashes: and on the shrubbery walks, crisp leaves from the beeches, accumulated where the grass bounds the gravel, make a warm edging, irregular, but pleasant to see. It is not that one is 'tired of summer:' but there is something soothing and pleasing about the autumn days. There is a great clearness of the atmosphere sometimes; sometimes a subdued, gray light is diffused everywhere. ”

“ Valleys and cultivated fields, have each their characteristics of richness or of loveliness, but they have no beauty in comparison with that of woodland scenery. The wild thyme and moss, the short-cropped herbage, the tufts of fern and golden-blossomed gorse, that vary the ground on which we tread; the solemn depth of the lone forest, the noble groups of trees that diversify the open spaces, and the clear streams that flow silently through the deep soil, bordered with cowslips and wild marigolds, have all, and each, their own peculiar attractions. ”

“ Unto a farmstead’s windowed rose,
And roof of moss and shingle.
Then darkly, darkly through the brush,
And dimly round the boulder,
Where cane and water-weeds grow lush,
Its current clear flows colder. ”

“ Grasses are becoming tall and cane-like and do not cover the ground with their leaves as at the North. Strange plants are crowding about me now. Scarce a familiar face appears among all the flowers of the day’s walk.
September 29. To-day I met a magnificent grass, ten or twelve feet in stature, with a superb panicle of glossy purple flowers. Its leaves, too, are of princely mould and dimensions. Its home is in sunny meadows and along the wet borders of slow streams and swamps. It seems to be fully aware of its high rank, and waves with the grace and solemn majesty of a mountain pine. ”

“ The trees were just as nature made them, and so was the grass, which in places was lying long, dry and withered under the sun, weeds creeping up in damp places, and the gravel of the pathway scattered upon the verges. ”

“ If, at times, I dream behind all this a grove, with now and then one of its broad, steepling or columnar trees pushed forward upon the lawn, it is only there that I see anything so stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce. ”

“ Beyond this the moors, the wild, barren, treeless moors, that stretch away for miles and miles, feeding a few herds of mountain sheep, harbouring some wild conies and hares, giving a nesting-place to the birds of heaven, and, for the use of man, neither grain nor pasturage, but quarries of stone and piles of peat luridly smouldering up there on autumn nights. ”

“ During the wet season a single rain may fill the gorges, sheet the mountain slopes with water, tear great trees from their hold, break off mighty rock fragments and carry them onward, like wooden blocks, with hundreds of tons of finer gravel. ”

“ The sky in that still land is always pale grey-blue in colour, and the earth, too, is grey like the rocks, and the trees have a grey-green foliage—trees more ancient in appearance than the worn granite hills, with gnarled and buttressed trunks like vast towers and immense horizontal branches, casting a slight shade over many acres of ground. ”

“ Wallowing in the soft black mud during the hot days, rising with father and mother at dawn and breakfasting on twigs, shrubs and sweet green grass is delightful and when the sun gets too hot, to wander through the dark cool forest and get acquainted with the wonderful sights and sounds of that leafy, mystical world. ”

“ We wind among the gravel paths that intersect the lawn, delight our eyes with the groups of shrubbery, still very young, that are so tastefully scattered here and there, and with the gay beds of carefully tended flowers. ”

“ A dull grey expanse of leaden cloud shut out the blue heaven, a hard black frost pinched up the ground, the blades of grass stood stiff and rugged on the frozen soil, and vague grey mists lay in all the hollows of the ground. ”

“ The sighing of the wind alone is heard among their sapless branches.
Thus much we know, that in all forest-trees the stages of vegetation are alike. But century after century must have rolled on, till the giant bulk of the noble trees were fully developed, till their stately columns, upheld an ample canopy of spreading boughs, beneath which the flocks that grazed in the open spaces of the forest might find a shelter from the storm. ”

“ If you want to see a new and peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through a grove draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored, and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene in fairy-land. ”

“ Crows perch upon the backs of sheep, The wheat goes yellow: women reap, Autumn winds ruffle brook and pond, Flutter the hedge and fly beyond. So the first things of nature run, And stand not still for any one, Contemptuous of the distant cry Wherewith you harrow earth and sky. ”

“ Immediately around us flowers, ferns, and shrubs adorn every bit of silvery gray rock, whilst wherever space admits we see noble trees, pines, oaks, beeches, some of marvellous growth, yet perched on heights so remote and lofty as to appear mere tufts of grass. ”

“ This mingled variety of garden and grove swept gradually up the sides of the mountains, until succeeded by dense forests, which in turn gave place to naked and craggy rocks, until the summits rose into the regions of perpetual snow. ”

“ But there is a general silence, a present suspense, while the [Pg 6] lime yellows, and the birch takes on her pale gold, and oak and sycamore and ash slowly transmute their green multitudes into a new throng clad in russet or dull red or sunset-orange. The forest is full of loveliness: in her dusky ways faint azure mists gather. When the fawn leaps through the fern it is no longer soundlessly: there is a thin dry rustle, as of a dove brushing swiftly from its fastness in an ancient yew. One may pass from covert to covert, from glade to glade, and find the Secret just about to be revealed ... ”

“ In the crevices of the rocks where a scanty soil has accumulated, is here and there planted a hardy evergreen, whose short and gnarled trunk, recurved and inflexible branches, proclaim the storms it has withstood, and the centuries during which it has vegetated. ”

“ To most people a grove is a grove, and all groves are alike. But no two groves are alike. There is as marked a difference between different forests as between different communities. A grove of pines without underbrush, carpeted with the fine-fingered russet leaves of the pine, and odorous of resinous gums, has scarcely a trace of likeness to a maple woods, either in the insects, the birds, the shrubs, the light and shade, or the sound of its leaves. ”

“ Some, falling on meadows and bogs, creep silently out of sight to the grass roots, hiding softly as in a nest, slipping, oozing hither, thither, seeking and finding their appointed work. Some, descending through the spires of the woods, sift spray through the shining needles, whispering peace and good cheer to each one of them. ”

“ Immense boulders jutted out on every hand; some of them seeming ready to fall and shake the earth to its centre. Wild and barren rocks gave foothold to trees and undergrowth more beautiful than the most cultivated garden; nothing lovelier than the ferns and wildflowers that abounded. ”

“ Young and old, men and women, they lay steaming on soft beds of springy spruce-branches with their toes to the crackling logs, snoring as snore sound sleepers, sheltered from the rain by the thick branches, the side of the hill, and here and there a canvas covering. ”

“ Loose and rattling gravel makes a handsome walk to look at, but an unpleasant one to walk upon. Nothing is more agreeable than well-trodden, dry, root-bound earth, as where grass has been worn away by frequent use ”

“ Those steep, green banks—for the rock, except in smooth, unclimbable patches, is covered with lush grass—have no appearance of an edge, and I have often shuddered, whilst plodding mechanically upwards, to find myself but just awakened from a reverie, within a yard or so of their soft-curled, lap-like crests. ”