88 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



and instead of wide-spreading moors, one now rambles along 

 tortuous little cleugbs, shaggy with lichen-covered birch and 

 rowan tree, or up the rugged course of a steep-sided rocky 

 glen — the favourite haunt of young "grey," and many of which 

 are among the most exquisitely wild and charming nooks 

 ever carved out by Nature. In these sequestered spots, as a 

 September sun shines brightly through the scattered birches, 

 upon the masses of bracken and variegated foliage below, 

 amongst which the setters are bustling about, their russet 

 coats in sharp contrast with the dark rushes and paler fern, 

 surely one has as fair a scene as eye need wish to rest on. 



Young Blackgame are among the slowest of game-birds in 

 attaining maturity. They are hatched early in June, but 

 cannot be considered full-grown till the end of September, 

 and during their four months of adolescence are certainly the 

 " softest " and most tender of all the game-birds — a curious 

 contrast with their strong and hardy nature when adult. 

 Even when half-grown it is quite common to see a young 

 Blackcock, if put up two or three times on a wet day, become 

 so draggled and exhausted as to be unable to rise again. 

 The habits of young Blackgame are precisely analogous with 

 their tardy bodily development. All through their protracted 

 adolescence, and during August and September, they are the 

 very tamest of birds. Then all at once they appear to gain 

 a sudden accession of strength and wildness ; their timid 

 skulking nature is discarded along with the weak, little, 

 pointed, ruddy tails of their nestling plumage, and in a few 

 weeks, even days, the young Blackcock, from being the tamest, 

 becomes the wildest of all our game-birds. 



To shoot the young Blackgame in August, when they are 

 hardly bigger than Quail, and before the cocks can be distin- 

 guished from the hens, is not only so unsportsmanlike a 

 proceeding, but it is so suicidal a policy, that one might expect 

 few people would be guilty of it. Yet I regret to say it is 

 far too prevalent a custom in many of the Border districts. 

 Hundreds of the wretched little fledgelings are massacred on 

 the " 20th," many even before that date, apparently from 

 sheer greed on the part of their murderers, or from a desire 

 to deceive the ignorant by boasting of the numbers of tbeir 



