240 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



The Gair, or Gairhill, was the name of the farm or shooting- 

 ground thus courteously tendered by his Grace. It lies on the 

 confines of Selkirkshire, near the sources of the Timah ; Eskdale 

 Moor spreading out immediately below it, in a south-westerly 

 direction. Although in the vicinity of the black-game district 

 above described, the Gair is more adapted for the rearing of 

 moorfowl, and at the time I speak of was numerously stocked, 

 but not more so, I have reason to think, than at present, with 

 red grouse. Its provision of heather is tolerably ample, but the 

 situation is too elevated and exposed to admit of successful 

 covey -shooting after the first of September, when the birds 

 usually throughout the Borderland become packed, and are not 

 to be approached without ceremony. I missed, in consequence, 

 the principal run of sport met with by my friend in this quarter, 

 the season being in reality gone by. Two or three brace of 

 good birds, however, he generally contrived to mystify ; and as 

 a portion of the intervening ground betwixt the Gair and Thirl- 

 stane was open to him, the shyness of the grouse seldom inter- 

 fered with the making up, before dusk, of a plump bag. 



A somewhat singular, but not, I understand, an unprecedented 

 incident occurs to my recollection, as having been met with on 

 one of these occasions. We were crossing a hill-top clad with 

 heather and wild grasses, when the dog suddenly caught scent, 

 and after having followed it up for seven or eight hundred yards 

 at the pace of a fox-hound, came all at once to a dead point. 

 On my friend nearing him, puzzled to know what his favourite 

 setter had been running, up sprung an old cock pheasant, which 

 was knocked down, almost instanter, as it took wing. The sin- 

 gularity of the occurrence lay simply in this, that the nearest 

 pheasant covers, those at Langholm Lodge, and at Bowhill, are 

 situated, as the crow flies, at a distance of sixteen or seventeen 

 miles from the spot where it happened. 



