94 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. 



drastically by getting up and going away, never 

 to return. He had been gone from the house 

 some hours, when his spouse, becoming alarmed 

 lest he should have gone out to destroy himself, 

 got up, and rousing some neighbours, induced 

 them to form a search party and go to look for 

 her husband. These men had not proceeded fan 

 before they observed the old man coming down 

 from the hills. When they met him, they enquired 

 how it was that he had changed his mind so 

 speedily. " Well/' replied the veteran, " when 

 I got upon the moors and the grouse began to 

 awake, they commenced to say, ' Birbeck, go back 

 go back, go back,' and I thought as the very fowls 

 of the air had taken to giving me sensible advice, 

 I would adopt it and return to my dear old wife 

 after all." 



The red grouse is a bird capable of assimilating 

 a certain amount of education, as most modern 

 sportsmen who have taken the trouble to study 

 its habits are aware. Some years ago I knew an 

 old man who held absolute sway over a piece of 

 heather-clad property situated almost in the 

 middle of one of the best grouse moors in the 

 world. When the twelfth of August came round, 

 he never fired a shot, but set thousands of fine 

 copper- wire snares in the sheep tracks, knowing 

 full well that when his neighbours began to drive 

 and shoot, the birds would be likely to fly on to 



