SHOOTING OX THE MOORS. 97 



table. For rather more than half a century ago tra- 

 vellers rarely frequented this retired village ; but mac- 

 adamised roads and steam have made a wonderful change 

 in this respect, and travellers- now really appear to 

 ferret out every obscure hole and corner of the United 

 Kingdom. 



On the day after our arrival, we were all impatience to 

 make a reconnaissance of the moors, taking a guide 

 and our dogs. After beating about the hills for two 

 or three hours and finding a pack of nine or ten grouse, 

 we returned to our quarters. Early on the morning of 

 the 12th we commenced our shooting, and when it is 

 taken into consideration that the hills were not pre- 

 served, we had no reason to complain of our day's 

 sport in having killed" seven or eight brace of grouse 

 and a mountain hare,* 



This, I doubt not, will be called a very contemptible 

 bag by sportsmen of the present day, who, in the pre- 

 served moors, return home dissatisfied if they have not 

 shot with their own gun, fifteen or twenty brace of 

 grouse. The French proverb says, " L'appetit vient en 

 mangeant,'' and so it may be said of those sportsmen 

 who have such a voracious appetite for slaughter. For 

 the first week four or five brace of grouse were about 

 the average of what we bagged, and when we found 

 grouse scarce, we got some snipe shooting in the bogs 



* To prove how destructive hawks are to the grouse, Robert Briggs, 

 who was gamekeeper to Lord Abojne (now Marquis of Huntly, iia 

 Perthshire, relates, " that he found a nest of a blue-falcon hawk, having 

 six young ones, and for curiosity I let them grow ; every morning and 

 everj- evening I visited the nest, to pick up the legs and wings of the 

 yoimg grouse, and I calcidated that in bringing up those young ones, 

 the pair of old birds destroyed about 800 gi-ouse. These blue-falcon's 

 nests are on the ground." I think there must be an exaggeration in 

 H 



