Note 3068 — BOOK X. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. (continued 2)

Buffon thinks that this is the grouse of the English, the Tetrao Scoticus of the naturalists; but Cuvier is of opinion that it is either the common wood-cock, the Tetrao bonasia of Linnæus, or else the wood-cock with pointed tail, of the south of Europe, the Tetrao alchata of Linnæus, most probably the latter, as the male has black and blue spots on the back; a fact which may explain the joke in the “Birds” of Aristophanes, where a run-away slave who has been marked with stripes, is called an attagen. By some it is called the “red-headed hazel-hen.”