IN THE HIGHLANDS 123 



got 99| brace of grouse off the crofters' hill ground, 

 60 brace off Isle Ewe, and 30 brace off the small Inveran 

 farm; and my total in that year was 1,314 grouse, 

 33 black game, 49 partridges, 110 golden plover, 35 wild 

 ducks, 53 snipe, 91 blue rock-pigeons, 184 hares, 

 without mentioning geese, teal, ptarmigan and roe, etc., a 

 total of 1,900 head. In other seasons I got sometimes 

 as many as 96 partridges, 106 snipe, and 95 woodcock. 

 Now so many of these good beasts and birds are either 

 quite extinct or on the very verge of becoming so. 

 I wish I had kept a regular diary in addition to a game- 

 book, because I saw and did many things connected with 

 sport and natural history which would have been well 

 worth recording. 



One day on the Isle of Ewe, in a wet turnip field 

 which was full of snipe, I started a thrush which had a 

 broad white ring round its throat, just like that of a ring 

 ouzel. I promptly shot it. Immediately afterwards 

 old Fan pointed at something, evidently close to her nose, 

 which I thought might perhaps be a wounded snipe, 

 though if she could have spoken she would have 

 whispered to me that it smelled like something she 

 had never smelled before ; and what should it be but a 

 quail, which I also shot. Afterwards I had both thrush 

 and quail stuffed in the one case. I have heard that 

 one hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago the 

 lairds in Easter Ross used to get quails there, and also 

 that they used to be found in the South of Ireland ; but , 

 with the exception of this one on Isle Ewe, I have never 

 heard of a quail having been killed in Ross-shire in my 

 time. 



