CAPERCAILZIE, BLACKGAME, PTARMIGAN, ETC. 57 



years' experience, it has several times rained every day for 

 four or five weeks in succession ; and, to make this the 

 more provoking during these moist periods, the nights have 

 been splendidly starlight, and so regularly so that specu- 

 lation was rife as to whether this would be accounted for 

 scientifically. Rain is fatal to all sport — blackgame and wood- 

 cock desert the covers ; partridges remain crouched close 

 together in shelter, which they only quit for the shorn stubbles 

 as food is required ; grouse sit on bare, burnt ground, and 

 are totally unapproachable ; the accumulating waters flood the 

 marshes, causing the wild fowl to swim so high in their 

 haunts that the advancing gunner is detected from afar ; even 

 the rivers become so flooded as to be unfishable — and, in 

 long mackintosh, the mournful sportsman is driven to the boat 

 on the loch, only, even there, to find the trout rising in a 

 washed-out fashion, and nothing can be more depressing than a 

 month of this sort of weather. The shooter sadly makes a 

 choice between a wetting without a mackintosh or a stewing in 

 one. Probably he tries both plans, and even then cannot make 

 up his mind which of the two processes is the less hateful. 

 For his part, the author prefers a short, thin, roomy 

 mackintosh, which will keep out rain from neck to hips ; for 

 any amount of wetting below these joints is quite immaterial 

 when taking exercise, but chest, shoulders, and back should be 

 kept dry. 



It is often stated that those taking exercise in mackintosh 

 coats will soon become rheumatic ; that, however, is not our 

 experience, for during the past forty years we have always 

 shot in one on wet days, and up to the present we are absolute 

 strangers to that painful malady. If only heavy showers are 

 passing, the coat when not worn is best carried across a thin 

 leather strap passed over the shoulder, and unless going 

 through thick cover, this is quicker for pulling off and on 

 than the rolling-up plan, while if the strap be put in one of 

 the pockets of the mackintosh as soon as it is done with for 

 I 



