THE MERLIN 275 



and that by chance a long way from the killing- 

 stations. Perhaps they never ' spotted ' the 

 latter, though generally these are fairly well 

 pronounced, and very much so when the eyrie 

 holds young. 



These stations are variously as they occur 

 on boulders or stones, on a wall, post, grouse- 

 butts, or even on a bare earthy patch or hillock, 

 again on a tump of stiff, rounded heather. Here, 

 for instance, in a certain haunt and embedded in 

 the yielding peat, a hoary, weather-worn boulder, 

 on which generations of Merlins have stood to 

 break up their quarry, rears its aged head. In 

 spring and summer this rock-table tells a piteous 

 tale. Little heaps of feathers, moths' wings, the 

 ' shards ' of beetles and many " castings " 

 (which are usually very diminutive), and droppings 

 cling to, litter and disfigure its already scarred 

 and wrinkled face. The lichen spangling it is 

 clotted here, discoloured there, by the blood of 

 countless victims, it has so become a regular 

 sacrificial altar, it affords mute testimony to many 

 a moorland murder, while on the ground beneath 

 is strewn a medley of bones and skulls the 

 Merlin's golgotha. All the same, life has gone 

 hand in hand with death, since close here many a 

 lusty brood of Merlins have first seen the sun set 

 a crimson or orange globe above the green 

 crests of the rosy-tinted hills ; it is here that the 

 stone-falcon ' reigns supreme, where Grouse 



T 2 



