STATISTICAL 273 



It is usually driven but twice a year, 

 with only one day's interval ; and it would 

 be well if many keepers could watch the 

 consummate skill with which vast numbers 

 of birds are manoeuvred on so small an 

 area. For the past seventeen years the 

 first days driving at Broomhead gives an 

 average of 900 brace, and here on August 

 24, 1904, there fell to nine guns no less 

 than 2743 grouse. 



A century ago grouse must have 

 swarmed in the Highlands. Colonel 

 Thornton writes of seeing 3000 in a 

 pack, and in the papers of the day 

 references such as the following may be 

 found : — 



Shooting in September, the present Year 1817, 

 at the Earl of Fife's in Mar Forest, notwithstand- 

 ing the incessant rain, the list of slaughter during 

 one week beside red Deer, Roes, and Ptarmigan, 

 amounted to 821 brace of Grouse, and the 

 Marquis ofHuntly's Party shot upwards of 1100 

 brace of Grouse. The accounts do not state 

 whether Forsyth's fulminating lock or any new 

 contrivance was resorted to, which resists the 

 water. 



18 



