138 GAME PRESERVERS AKD BIRD PRESERVERS. 



burns what the wind and a box of kicifers will 

 enable him to burn. Wliole tracts of thirty- 

 acres are burnt down till they would not shel- 

 ter a lark. 



And again, with a rainfall of nearly 100 

 inches per annum, draining, even open surface 

 draining, is for miles and miles not attempted ; 

 and though grouse will hve and thrive in actual 

 bogs, where there are a constant succession 

 of hillocks and ridges always dry, they will not 

 stay on a dead level, to be for a week at a time 

 ankle deep in water. They leave, and finding 

 land in a condition more worthy of the nine- 

 teenth century they never return. 



Were the respectable barbarians who 

 owned many of these Western Highlands es- 

 tates a thousand years ago, to return to them 

 to-morrow, they could almost fancy they had 

 only been asleep for a week. Nothing has 

 been done, except to cut down most of the oak 

 and birch woods they used to hunt the roe deer 

 in, not a tree being planted in their place, 



