202 AUTUMNS IN ARGYLESHIRE 



unaccountably tame that otherwise it would have 

 escaped notice ; but this is the exception which 

 proves the rule. Coming farther south to the 

 Border country, on the long rolling moors of 

 Eskdale and Teviotdale the grouse are still 

 wilder, and I have the dogs taken up and walk- 

 ing in line resorted to for preference, even in 

 the first week in August. In Westmorland 

 the birds are wilder than in Roxburghshire and 

 Berwick, and in many parts of Yorkshire the 

 practice of walking after grouse at all has fallen 

 quite into desuetude a strange anomaly, which 

 cannot altogether be accounted for by the char- 

 acter of the heather and the number of birds. 

 It is true, as a rule, that birds are wildest 

 where they are most plentiful and where the 

 heather is shortest ; but I have known them 

 tame on very bare ground and unapproachable 

 in the most luxuriant heather, and it really 

 seems as if the nature of the birds varied in 

 different localities. The practice of driving has 

 its origin, not in the laziness of the modern 

 sportsman, but in the necessity for some method 

 of getting at birds which had really learnt to 

 defy all other modes of pursuit. For this pur- 

 pose the wildness of the birds is actually an 

 advantage. Fewer beaters are required to put 

 them up and send them forward, and the tame 

 coveys, which alight before facing the line of 

 fire, and run about spying the ground before 



