IGG FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



many successive seasons^ aud tlie pheasants in 

 many places too have been wasting away. 



Now — in the autmim of 1872 — there was some 

 disease which none of us ever knew before, utterly 

 devastating the ground of hares ; and the same, 

 but not to so great an extent, with the much- 

 abused rabbit. 



Disease, or the same kind of malady, had 

 ascended, — by contagious properties, I suppose, in 

 the air, — to tlie ptarmigan on the highest moun- 

 tains of Scotland, and had devastated the black- 

 game and grouse on the hills and lower level. 

 Turkey's on the farms in some places had 

 sickened with it ; and with chickens the e])i- 

 demic terminated in the most fatal case, of the 

 gapes. 



Those partridges that I ventured to kill 

 merely for the table in my own manor, though 

 to the liand in good condition, when picked were 

 black in the skin, and when roasted for the table, 

 under the hands of a good and careful cook, 

 were as black as tliey looked to be when merely 

 divested of their feathers. So hlacJc did they 

 loolv, tliougli in some instances 2:)lump, that I 

 forbade tlieir l^eing served at table any more 



