Historically, the small species is the more important of the two. He is a Bible bird, and was as familiar as the eagle and the crane to the civilised nations of antiquity in Asia and Africa, where letters and arts had their origin, when the great wood-grouse was known only to the barbarians of Europe. When we consider how bound to earth (like our unfortunate selves) the gallinaceous birds are, seldom using their wings, unless to escape from some sudden, pressing danger into the nearest cover, it strikes us as very wonderful that the plump little quail should be as great a migrant as the most aërial kinds--the swallows and the warblers. When with us in the summer he is a dweller on the ground, an earth-lover, like his stay-at-home relation, the partridge; yet in his wide wanderings he crosses seas, vast deserts, and the loftiest mountain chains; and by means of this migratory instinct he has diffused himself over the three great continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ptarmigan. Lagopus mutus. Winter: pure white; a black line from the angle of the beak through the eye; outer tail-feathers black; above the eye a scarlet fringed membrane; beak black; tarsi and toes thickly clothed with woolly feathers. _Female_: without the black line through the eyes. Summer: wings, under tail-coverts, two middle tail-feathers, and legs white; outer tail-feathers black, some of them tipped with white; all the rest of the plumage ash-brown marked with black lines and dusky spots. Length, fifteen inches. * * * * * [Illustration: _PLATE XIII._ PTARMIGAN (WINTER AND AUTUMN PLUMAGE). ²⁄₇ NAT. SIZE.] In the British Islands the ptarmigan is at present confined to the Highlands of Scotland, the ‘region of stones,’ and to some of its islands, where, however, it is decreasing in numbers.