152 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



kill sitting hens before they can get off their nests 

 and swallow wee " poults " in the most business- 

 like way. I knew one great lanky conspicuous- 

 ribbed mongrel in North Yorkshire that was guilty 

 of this and another curious practice. He must have 

 been of French extraction, for he would swallow 

 young frogs as fast as he could find them. 



Sheep farmers' cats often take to a feral life 

 and do a great amount of damage amongst Grouse 

 in the breeding season. Some five or six years ago 

 I was out with a gamekeeper in the North of Eng- 

 land after a Sparrow-hawk that had made her nest 

 in a little ghyll which divided a number of heather- 

 clad pastures that were full of sitting Grouse. In 

 crossing one of these pastures, on our way to another 

 part of the beat, we came upon an ominous-looking 

 train of feathers. In one direction it led to a head- 

 less female Grouse, and in the other to a nest con- 

 taining seven eggs, from three of which protruded 

 the cold tips of little beaks. I stood by looking 

 on in sad silence, whilst the keeper vented his rage 

 in entirely unprintable language. We turned back 

 into the ghyll where my companion had some steel 

 gins hidden, and whilst he made a stone passage 

 five or six feet long by twelve inches high and 

 seven or eight wide, I took off my jacket and 

 tickled a mountain trout under a moss-clad boulder. 

 The stone passage was built on a fairly level bit 

 of ground, close to some great loose rocks under 

 which the feline depredator was probably hiding 

 at the time. The trout was suspended in the 

 middle of the passage, and a trap carefully covered 

 with moss laid on the floor of it at either end, 

 and the next morning that keeper avenged the 

 headless Grouse. No cat can resist a trout as bait, 

 and no gamekeeper who knows his business ever 



