208 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



Thornton's tour in the Highlands, about 1803. But the 

 peregrines have not ceased to exist merely in patches of 

 country, and certainly not in the same degree as the south- 

 east line of grouse distribution is remote or the reverse. 

 It is clearly because of the falcons that the grouse acquired 

 the habit of lying and hiding from danger in the first instance 

 everywhere alike. That is not the question, but how it 

 happened that when the danger ceased to exist in magnitude 

 one lot of grouse preserved the ancient instinct and the other 

 lot lost it. 



Grouse that lie for protection are often spoken of as " tame," 

 but this term hardly truly expresses the primitive instincts found 

 in the grouse of Ireland and the west and north of Scotland. 

 Grey-lag geese in Caithness, nine hundred and ninety-nine 

 times in a thousand, will fly at the sight of man ; but once, at 

 least, a grey-lag was observed cowering under an artificial 

 kite, and this was not because he was tamer than usual, but 

 because he was more scared and more wild than ever before, 

 or since for he was shot. 



Most shooters in Scotland have doubtless observed that a 

 little bad weather sends a lot of old grouse on to the tops of the 

 hills, not on the high ptarmigan tops, but on to the bare places 

 on the hills immediately above heather slopes. There they 

 would not dare to go if there were a few peregrines about, 

 because on such ground they are at the long-winged hawk's 

 mercy. It was not until between 1840 and 1860 that much 

 headway was made in Scotland against the hawks, and it is 

 quite probable that the grouse never would have acquired a 

 taste for the " tops " if the peregrines had not been killed, and 

 the present trouble about killing the old cocks would never have 

 occurred in Scotland. This subject is referred to at greater length 

 and in more aspects in the chapter dealing with grouse bags. 



In Yorkshire, however, it seems obvious that the grouse 

 were made wild by Act of Parliament that is, by the fixing of 

 a date for the opening of shooting which suited Scotland but 

 did not suit Yorkshire at that time. 



As everyone knows, there are doubts in the Highlands of 



