GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 223 



gradually year by year, the heather remains long and 

 old, the driving slack and listless, and you are puzzled 

 to account for the deterioration of your moor, change 

 your whole staff of keepers, tell your new ones that 

 you expect certain results and mean to have them, 

 and in a year or two you will probably be astonished 

 to find how the grouse have taken to your ground 

 again. 



On high moors you are liable to lose a great many 

 birds by their leaving the ground for lower ranges in 

 severe weather. It is quite worth while to feed them 

 a little at such times. It is chiefly when the snow is 

 caked or frozen over with a very thin coating of ice, 

 and they cannot scratch through it to get food, that 

 they are most pinched and may leave the ground, 

 never to come back. I remember Mr. Walter Stan- 

 hope ' telling me that in the very hard winter of 

 1859-60 the grouse on his Dunford Bridge moors 

 left the ground in hundreds ; many were killed in the 

 fields in a half-starved state, and even one or two in 

 the barrack square at Sheffield, some fifteen miles off. 

 He then sent men up to the moor with long rakes, and 



1 Mr. Walter Spencer Stanhope, who for many years re- 

 presented one of the divisions of the West Riding in Parliament. 

 An admirable letter from his pen is given in the Badminton 

 Library, S/i ooting> vol. ii. p. 1 1, describing some of the earliest 

 methods and results of driving grouse. 



