100 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



the Marches were out. Plenty of exercise was then a cer- 

 tainty, and the honest old muzzle-loader being in each man's 

 hand, the grouse had a better chance of making good a 

 retreat; men shot in more instances with greater modera- 

 tion, more pleasure in the shooting, and less in seeing the 

 total of their bags in the next batch of local papers ! 



In those Arcadian days, when the shooter was not de- 

 posited in the midst of his grouse land by luxurious sleeping- 

 cars, which had brought him north from the metropolis in 

 nine hours or so, such a thing even as free shootings were 

 not unknown. Amongst " the islands " and the rocky glens 

 of the western coast, a man might establish himself and 

 roam pretty nearly at will; to-day I doubt if there is a 

 grouse in the highlands that could be shot without leave 

 by any man of conscience, for ownership has extended 

 in every direction, and the happy debatable lands of our fore- 

 fathers are known no longer. 



I have no desire whatever tp decry grouse or grouse 

 preserving. The teaching of our demagogues that moor and 

 mountain belong to the peasant and should be cultivated 

 for and by him alone is difficult to refute, because there 

 is a grain of truth in it. Some seventy per cent, of the 

 highlands cannot and will never be cultivated by any crop 

 that the crofter can afford to rear. Such soil, rock it were 

 almost better to call it, is fit only for grouse and the slow- 

 growing firs and spruces (harbouring capercailzie and black- 

 cock) which give no return for capital for twenty years. 

 As for the remaining percentage of land, much of it is 

 cultivated. If it will grow crops and does not, then it ought 

 to. It is on this peg of a little cultivatable land unculti- 

 vated that agitators hang all their grievances; and land- 

 owners would do wisely by taking the ground from under 

 their feet and helping crofters to reclaim that strip of bog, 

 they covet, and to build a cot to look after their poor harvest 

 of ragged grain. The shame of the highlands to-day, and 

 their pressing danger during the next ten years, are the 



