260 THE GROUSE 



in widely separated localities — once on 

 Lord Lichfield's moor at Cannock Chase 

 in Staffordshire, some ten years ago, 

 when a party of guns killed over the 

 hundred, and again on the Earl of Stair's 

 estates at Lochinch Castle in Wigtown- 

 shire, where Viscount Dalrymple, shooting 

 over Barnshangan moor with a party of 

 five other guns, in October 1905, killed 

 111 brace of grouse and 105 blackgame 

 (almost all of which were cocks), besides 

 20 brace of partridges and six other 

 varieties of game. But these are excep- 

 tional days ; most of us must be content to 

 meet the blackcocks only as an occasional 

 incident in those charming days of varied 

 sport which only the borders of the moor- 

 land can provide, and the writer is tempted 

 to conclude the chapter with a day from 

 his own gamebook, in which, although 

 blackgame do not figure largely in point 

 of numbers, their addition to the bag was 

 one of the outstanding features in what 

 one of the guns not inaptly termed "a 

 glorified poach." 



