132 Practical Game Preserving. 



be said to be moorland that has been roughly ploughed and 

 planted, up to the time when the trees begin to kill down the 

 heather, sedge, and gorse. If parts of the ground be 

 swampy, so much the better, in the black grouse's estima- 

 tion ; failing this, it will frequent the edges of more mature 

 wooded growths bordering on the moorland, but this also 

 being denied, it has recourse to the roughest, wettest, and 

 most thickly covered parts of the upland wastes. 



The black cock is found in many parts of Great Britain, 

 where, however, it is not often plentiful, and while adapted to 

 a far larger range of country, it is in no way so numerous as 

 the grouse proper. This is one of our grievances. If the 

 bird be so unexacting as to its haunts, why is it not more 

 generally appreciated ? To our mind, it is a far better bird 

 of sport than the red grouse, and offering, as it does, so 

 many facilities to the preserver, both in habitat and ease 

 of hand-rearing, we are surprised that it is not more pre- 

 served. On every moor in the kingdom, from John o' Groats 

 to Land's End, the black cock could be raised, and on a 

 great many other places besides. Take one, for instance, 

 Dartmoor, where thousands and thousands of acres are to 

 be had almost for the asking, and scarcely any black 

 game present, whereas formerly it abounded, but it has been 

 killed and driven off rather than died out. And there must be 

 many more similar cases. We have already lost the caper- 

 cailzie, and are not certain whether we may get it back, 

 and ere long we shall have let our stock of black game run 

 out too. 



The yearly course of the black grouse's life varies very 

 considerably from that of the red kind. In the months of 



