CHAPTER VII 



ON GROUSE-DRIVING 



The practice of driving the grouse to the 

 guns initiated not, to borrow from the 

 scientist's vocabulary, in " spontaneous 

 variation," or the man with the gun 

 becoming too lazy to walk after the birds, 

 but rather in "adaptation to environ- 

 ment," or, in other words, because for 

 some unexplained reason the birds became 

 too wild to allow the man with the gun 

 to approach within range, and it became 

 necessary either to give up shooting 

 them altogether, or to devise some new 

 method of bringing them to bag. 



Cannon Hall, Barnsley, in the Shef- 

 field district, can justly claim the honour 

 of furnishing the first recorded instance 

 of driving. Here, as early as the year 



155 



