134 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



" stand between the wind and their nobility," or if they 

 catch the smallest sound or the faintest movement from 

 behind your screen. 



However, to return to our capercailzie. After the mis- 

 adventure with the buck, strict attention to business was the 

 order of the day, and being 1 so high up the mountain side 

 that a vast extent of snow-laden fir-tops were visible below, 

 I struck along the slope decidedly better walking and 

 proceeded with due caution. Everywhere round about the 

 white covering of the ground was pitted with marks of the 

 mountain rabbits which abound in these wilds, and were 

 skipping hither and thither in tempting style, which would 

 certainly have brought retribution on them had I not been 

 after better game. These hill conies are as different as can 

 be from their cousins of the lowlands ; their fur is much 

 greyer more like that of the badger, their limbs are shorter, 

 and their build altogether closer and more compact. It 

 might have been feared that naturalists, in bestowing Latin 

 names on the group, would have taken note of these facts 

 and made the variety into a species ; but it is well it has not 

 chanced so, for such dividing where Nature has made no 

 division is not to be commended there are already only too 

 many instances of it. 



A minute or two and a fallen pine tree appears lying' 

 in a vast mass of green confusion across the rocks a little 

 above us. "Just the place!" I mutter, and scramble 

 towards it with gun ready this time, and then pause about 

 fifteen yards off. A moment of silence succeeds, and the dog- 

 is on the point of being sent in, when a mighty flutter takes 

 place spontaneously, and a brown mass <lp quits " 011 the far- 

 side, but keeps the tangle of branches so cleverly between us 

 that I am quite unable to get a fair sight, and is away 

 through the wood in a second. There is no time for the 

 sorrowful reflections which might else have followed, for 

 another prodigious disturbance occurs among the partially 

 withered branches, and amidst a cloiid of disturbed snow the 



