The Red Grouse Protection. 129 



ere the earliest train could arrive with its valuable freight 

 of fairly and legally killed birds. This kind of poacher is 

 essentially a night-worker. Dogs and nets by moonlight are 

 his chief instruments. Then he is an adept in the use of the 

 stick amongst coveys of young birds, which, when first away 

 from their parents' watchful care, lie like stones, and are 

 knocked down as easily as the proverbial puffin. Shepherds, 

 who know all the poachers in the parish, are very adept at 

 this. 



The wanton destruction of grouse has largely increased 

 of late years, and is due to a great extent to the want of 

 tact of proprietors and of their keepers, but also to the hostile 

 feeling between class and class, which has been so care- 

 fully nurtured by agitators. Farmers and their men are 

 the chief delinquents. Under the pretence of driving sheep 

 on to and out from the moor, an enormous amount of 

 destruction is perpetrated. Sheep in flocks are taken at a 

 gallop over ground where birds are thickly nesting, and 

 sheep dogs are taught to hunt like spaniels, and drive game 

 at every opportunity. It is during the spring and early 

 summer when these brutes do most harm, disturbing the hens 

 on their nests, and destroying the young and feeble broods 

 unable as yet to find safety in flight. Swaling or burning 

 the heather is another fruitful source of disaster, and one 

 patent to the most inexperienced. As an instance of this, 

 we can adduce a case that came under our own notice. 

 About sixty acres of fine heather were burnt on a certain 

 moor one Saturday in April ; subsequently walking across 

 it, we counted no less than fourteen deserted nests of grouse. 

 There is, therefore, some reason for avoiding swaling, and 



K 



