GROUSE. 101 



few incorrigible landlords whose views have not broadened 

 with the times, and who would tyrannize in mediaeval style 

 over a long-headed and thoughtful yeomanry who are germi- 

 nating new ambitions under the light of better education. 



It is such, and the harshnesses of American millionaires, 

 who oust pet lambs from cottagers' paddocks, and de- 

 populate glens to keep a few more head of deer, that 

 endanger our northern shooting and strengthen the hands 

 of demagogues. If the Game Laws are ever abolished, and 

 we lapse into the gameless condition of France, for instance, 

 it will be the direct result of such game-preserving as this. 



As for those heresies of a, higher class, the erection of 

 " trap " fences round deer forests, by which your neighbour's 

 stags can join those which are legitimately your own but 

 can never return to their own feeding grounds again, and 

 the snaring of your brother sportsman's grouse by nets put 

 up along his marches, they are offences of the deepest hue, 

 bar sinisters on the sportsman's escutcheon which should 

 place him beyond the pale of any friendly intercourse or 

 good fellowship, and reduce him at once to the rank of 

 a professional poultryman. 



Such measures as the Access to Mountains Bill and 

 others affecting game preserving will come, and ought to 

 come shortly ; but otherwise, I think there will be no very 

 revolutionary game legislation for a long time, no matter 

 how much Radicals may bluster. 



As to the natural prospects of grouse, as one shooter 

 observes, it has become almost a custom of late years on 

 very prolific moors to test the number of grouse killed by 

 comparison with the figures of the year 1872, the greatest 

 grouse year ever known both in Scotland and in Yorkshire. 

 In 1872, on a famous Aberdeenshire moor, 412 brace were 

 killed over dogs, by four guns, on the 12th ; within a fort- 

 night of this unexampled performance, Lord Walsingham 

 killed his famous bag of 423 brace to his own gun, in one 

 day, on his moor of Blubberhouse, in the Otley district of 



