192 THE BIRD WATCHER 
anxious to exterminate this bird, so interesting both 
in itself and throughg¢he world of old legend and 
superstition that adheres to it, in order that they may 
have grouse to bang at over their barren brown moors. 
Had these men anything within them that responded 
to the real and only charms that these bleak northern 
isles they were born in possess, or ever can possess, 
except to vulgarians—their wildness, that is to say, 
their wild bird-life, and their past—they would care 
more for one raven than for a thousand brace of 
grouse. They would rejoice and congratulate them- 
selves whenever they saw its sable flight, and think its 
presence amongst them a point of high superiority 
over richer and more fertile lands. They would see, 
then, how the gaunt, black bird was in keeping and 
harmony with their scathed hills and storm-lashed 
coasts, and, seeing and knowing and feeling, they 
would seek to keep it amongst them, with every other 
wild and waste-haunting thing. But no; instead of 
rejoicing they lament. Born to such a heritage, they 
would exchange it for a park and a game-preserve if 
they could; as they cannot—for the grouse will 
have nothing to say to them, it draws the line at the 
Orkneys—they will do their best to turn a living 
wilderness into a dead one, they will chase away the 
only smile that ever sat on the hard-featured face of 
their country, take away its youth—for the birds, each 
spring, are that—and leave it childless and unchild- 
bearing, like a gaunt, hideous, barren old hag. That 
is what they will do, these romantic islanders, for the 
