160 A HUNDKED YEAKS 



of sheep, and the deer had had time to breed and 

 accumulate, one could sometimes almost make oneself 

 believe that the smoother and greener patches on the hill 

 looked red when the sun shone on them, so thickly were 

 they covered with deer ! On our side of the loch, 

 though the ground consisted of only bog, rocks, and 

 heather, it was just about the best for grouse in our big 

 parish. Shooting over it with dogs pretty late in the 

 season, a cousin and I got 53 brace one day, and SOJ brace 

 another day. In the year when Lord Medway had our 

 shooting, his total bag was 412 brace, and his lord- 

 ship got 100 brace in two days on the shores of the 

 Fionn Loch, on the two beats right and left of what 

 was then the new road. These flat moors used also to 

 have, besides grouse, a lot of golden plovers breeding on 

 them, with their charming little satellites, the dunlins, 

 whom stupid people often mistook for young plovers, 

 because they also had little black patches on their 

 breasts. Nowadays not a plover or a dunlin is to be 

 seen, and the grouse are very few and far between. 

 No one seems able to explain why all these birds have 

 died out ! 



The biggest wild-cat we ever caught — and we caught 

 many a big one — was a monster we got close to the 

 Fionn Loch. It measured forty -three inches in length. 

 How I lamented he could not have been tamed, as he 

 would have looked so handsome on a rug, lying warming 

 himself before a drawing-room fire ! 



I was nearly forgetting the otters. The Fionn Loch 

 is a particularly favourite resort for them, and the 

 little Gruinord River is their highway from the Fionn 



