DECEMBER 231 



husbands; in the love-season they spend most of the 

 day together, devoting an hour morning and evening 

 to receive visits from the hens, which often have to fly 

 miles from their intended nesting-place to the flirting 

 ground. During the hours not occupied in love-making, 

 the cocks spend their time at the club, as it were some 

 sunny knoll, birchen grove, or meadow by the river, 

 where a wary observer may watch them, drumming and 

 strutting like turkey-cocks, dancing, and performing 

 the most grotesque antics for each other's delectation, 

 but never, as I think, fighting. 



Although black-game are diminishing in many places, 

 there are plenty still on large estates, where the ground 

 is suitable for them, such as Drumlanrig, in Nithsdale, 

 and Cumloden, in the valley of Cree ; and the seasons 

 of 1895 and 1896 were both very favourable for them. 

 They love the debateable ground between moorland and 

 arable, and only want fair treatment to take care of 

 themselves in such places. It is not likely that any- 

 body will ever see again what I once saw within five- 

 and- thirty miles of Charing Cross, namely, five 

 grey-hens sitting together on a birch-tree in the Hurt 

 Wood, between Guildford and Dorking. 



In the north, the letting of shootings has done more 

 than anything else to make black-game scarce. Many 

 unwilling landowners have been forced to do so by the 

 depression in agriculture, and, though there are many 

 shooting tenants who treat the ground in a sportsman- 

 like way, there are others of course who, whether from 

 ignorance or anxiety to get as much as they can for 



