242 LEAVES FROM A GAME BOOK. 



favourable, and with Captain Shiffner and Harry Scarlett 

 we bagged twenty brace. 



Then the 7th saw me appearing at Lamington once 

 more, and here it was perhaps the very worst grouse 

 season ever known, as during the whole of the nesting 

 time there had been from ten to twenty degrees of frost 

 every night, which had destroyed nearly all the nests. 

 We only shot a few brace of grouse, and these were 

 mostly old birds. 



On the 16th I went on to stay with Major 

 Pearson, at Quarter House, Broughton ; and here, too, 

 the grouse were nearly' extinct, and he had already 

 given over shooting them. This season was also one 

 of the very worst for salmon fishers — the moderate 

 fishings gave no sport at all, the good ones but 

 little, and the very best were poor in the extreme 

 when compared with previous years. The Spey was 

 especially bad, and the celebrated Gordon Castle water 

 exceptionally so, and no possible comparison could be 

 made between this season and that of 1886, in which 

 year, on the last day of the fishing — 15th October — 



