88 llEMINISCENCES OF THE LEWS. 



soon caught and eaten, and then tlie eggs are 

 taken. Against this system no amount of 

 keepering can avail. The wholesale destruction 

 that takes place may be conceived. In some 

 places it amounts almost to annihilation, and 

 accounts in some measure for the number of 

 single cocks seen about. If even any egg- 

 stealers be caught, the difficulty of punishing 

 the culprits is great ; and so is the expense, for 

 the canny Scot wisely introduces a clause into 

 your lease that the expenses of the prosecution 

 are to be borne by the renter of the shooting, 

 though he can only prosecute through the 

 Fiscal, whose duty it is, ex officio, to perform 

 that office. I, therefore, always eschewed pro- 

 secutions ; and, at last, by being well known 

 to the general population over my shooting, 

 having been the means of doing them some 

 little service, having popular keepers who well 

 knew the habits of the people, and by a little 

 bribery of so much per brace to the herd of 

 every shealing, I was able, in some degree, to 

 stop the wholesale destruction that sometimes 

 takes place. But still, the system of shealing 

 — which cannot be prevented, though it might 

 be very much modified — is a bar to that steady 

 increase of grouse that good preservation might 

 otherwise produce. 



