2i8 SHOOTING THE GROUSE 



allowing incompetence or want of care to decrease the 

 productive powers of good moorland. 



Again, as this demand increases and the subject is 

 more and more widely ventilated, the ingenuity of the 

 poacher, the pothunter, and the receiver of poached or 

 illegally killed game becomes annually more formid- 

 able. The only saving clause is that the red grouse 

 being universally known to be exclusively indigenous 

 to the British Islands, we do not see the poulterer's 

 shops in March, April, or May full of ' Siberian ' or 

 ' Norwegian ' grouse stolen from British moors, as we 

 undoubtedly should if the species were found in those 

 foreign countries. I must refer my readers to my 

 remarks in the volume on ' The Partridge ' as to the 

 illegally procured birds which come into the London 

 markets on August 12 and September i, and to 

 the suggestions I there made, which I now wish to 

 urge again. Owners and lessees of shootings seem 

 for the most part not to have realised the extent of 

 the illicit traffic in game, which applies to grouse 

 almost more than any other kind ; and I venture again 

 to express the hope that some one with more leisure 

 and more influence than I have may found some Asso- 

 ciation to combat this evil in a businesslike manner. 

 Those who are in London on August 1 2 may be quite 

 certain that any grouse that is offered to them, 



