14 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE 



was doubtless due to their straying off our ground. 

 They have an area of about 1,200 or 1,500 acres of 

 heather, which is for the most part surrounded by 

 grazing land. The stock is now reduced to about 

 eight or ten brace.' It must be the wish of all good 

 sportsmen to see such experiments as that just de- 

 scribed meet with an enlarged success. We do not 

 take as much pains to improve our sport at home as 

 we might. I wonder, for example, that landowners 

 do not unite to turn down gadwall and other fowl all 

 over the country, and thus convert our ponds and 

 rivers into a national preserve of wildfowl. There are 

 thousands of places that would hold a brace of teal or 

 a few pairs of pintail, if only they were planted with 

 large beds of rushes and well preserved. As for the 

 grouse, its good qualities have begun to attract atten- 

 tion among our Continental neighbours. The pioneer 

 was Baron Dickson, who established red grouse in 

 Sweden between twenty and thirty years ago. It is 

 now reported that the Belgian Government intends to 

 people the sandy heaths of that country with drafts of 

 red grouse. 



Already the example of Baron Dickson has been 

 emulated by Count Kniphausen, who owns a property 

 in East Friesland, and has given the following account 

 of his experiment : ' In the autumn of 1891 I ordered 



