GROUSE 227 



season, driving is not followed. Elsewhere, given suit- 

 able driving ground, and a sufficient supply of beaters 

 at hand, the shooting of driven grouse must become 

 fairly general. In the case of some outlying moors, a 

 standing difficulty is the supply of beaters. In certain 

 districts the scarcity in this respect precludes all possi- 

 bility of driving save by the aid of imported hands. 

 In other scantily-populated parts the beaters' wages 

 rule very high, $s. per day, with lunch and whisky, 

 being sometimes paid for the services of none too 

 efficient helps. 



Fifty years ago good grouse-moors of 5000 or 6000 

 acres were to be rented in Scotland for ^50 or 60 ; 

 now, possibly, for the same extent of ground a rent of 

 ten times that amount will have to be paid. The latter 

 sums, however, include a good lodge or shooting-box, 

 similar conveniences being too often non-existent in 

 former days. It is some time since grouse-shootings 

 came to be apprised at 1 per brace ; now they are often 

 considered to be worth half as much more, and even at 

 this high figure moors capable of yielding good bags of 

 these birds are none too easily procured. 



In Ireland, for obvious and all-sufficient reasons, much 

 available moorland is of miscroscopic value as compared 

 with the grouse-moors of England and Scotland. In 

 that country the absence of the systematic preservation 

 of game, and the consequent prevalence of poaching, is 

 greatly responsible for the fact of half-a-million acres of 

 otherwise productive moors going altogether unlet, or if 

 let, then often at prices ruling under threepence per acre. 

 Undoubtedly, the due suppression of poaching and 

 systematic preservation of the red grouse would cause 

 Irish sporting properties to advance greatly in value, 



