140 WILD LIFE OF SCOTLAND 



not become perfectly well established in Shetland, 

 if sufficient trouble were bestowed on the effort. 

 The birds would have to face some drawbacks here, 

 as elsewhere, e.g. "the dense population, the wet 

 and stormy springs, and the sinful custom of 

 burning heather all over, instead of in suitable 

 strips." 



My experience of Shetland is of a land, suffici- 

 ently thickly populated no doubt for the extreme 

 poverty of the soil, but utterly lifeless in the main, 

 for want of a sign of human habitation ; of a land 

 too, so sodden, even up the hillsides, that my feet 

 were seldom dry. 



If, even in Argyllshire, the number of grouse 

 is considerably smaller than in Perthshire, for no 

 want of heather, but simply because of the addling 

 of the eggs, one is led to judge that in Shetland not 

 a single egg would escape. 



The number of Royston crows is an objection 

 which could be more easily reckoned with, than the 

 irreconcilable soil, and the almost constant mist, and 

 drip. 



Rabbits abound ; but the natives seem to have a 

 prejudice, common in such outlying districts, but 

 which I could not trace to its source, against using 

 them as food. Under the circumstances, they 



