58 GAME BIRDS AND SHOOTING-SKETCHES 



the course of time 8uital)le to tlieir habits is sufficient 

 reason for the partiality, sudden or gradual, for these 

 localities. Many causes are assigned as reasons for this 

 gradual extinction, and certainly not the least potent is 

 that of the destruction of the hens, which are at all times 

 less wary than the males. They are easily shot, while the 

 cocks, which ought properly to number only one-fourth of 

 the stock of birds, as a rule, far exceed the hens in point 

 of numbers. I can well remember when I first went 

 regularly to shoot at annual Blackgame drives on 

 Rohallion, that, in the course of two short Ijeats of 

 about a mile each, we generally used to kill from fifteen 

 to twenty brace of these birds. Since that time 

 (1881) I have noticed with sorrow the annual change 

 for the worse, in the state of the bao- after shootino- 

 these two drives, until in the year 1889 but two 

 Blackcocks fell to the guns, whilst only about twenty 

 were seen altogether. On this moor every care has been 

 taken of the birds, and for its size it is one of the best 

 Grouse-grounds in Perthshire, yet the Blackgame, from 

 amongst which Ijut very few hens are killed, have 

 gradually diminished, till I am afraid it will in time l)e 

 considered quite a vara avis. This little moor is only 

 a case in point, for the same may be said of about three- 

 quarters of the Blackgame-ground in Scotland. 



Bv watchino^ these birds durino- the breedino-season I 

 have also noticed — comparing the species with other game 

 birds — how very large a proportion of the hens are barren. 

 One would imagine from this that the period of fertility 

 of the Greyhen is much shorter than that of the other 

 kinds, in fact only lasting two or three years ; and should 



