250 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



the era of great sheep farms, grouse moors, or deer forests. 

 Another resultant from the same great change was the dis- 

 covery that the more delicate breeds of Cheviot sheep might 

 with care thrive on the Scotch hills, and could be brought 

 to perfection much earlier, and were therefore more valuable 

 to the breeder than the hardy stock of former days. Then, 

 by a natural sequence, came the large sheep farms in place 

 of the deserted crofter townships. To assert, as is often 

 done now, that the glens were cleared of men to make room 

 for sheep, is to display the sheerest ignorance or wilful 

 perversion of fact regarding the economic conditions. In 

 a few instances this might have occurred, and in some cases 

 no doubt tales of great hardship might be told ; but in the 

 vast majority of instances the people went voluntarily, or, 

 if removed, it was to save them from a life of wretched 

 dependence on charity, in a land which could no longer 

 support them, even though they had it for nothing. But 

 with the large sheep farmers came many wealthy Southrons 

 eager to enjoy the sport of which they had heard so much; 

 and as grouse and sheep lived amicably together, so the 

 sheep farmer and the shooting tenant became corelatives, 

 and the fascinations of grouse shooting grew into a fashion, 

 and then into a craze, with startling suddenness ; and thus 

 the moors were parcelled out, and boundaries denned with 

 mathematical exactness, and hosts of keepers and watchers 

 employed to protect the dearly bought luxury. But it could 

 not be expected that so sudden a revolution as this should 

 all at once commend itself to the people, especially to a 

 people so wedded to old tradition and old methods as the 

 Scotch. Those who remained and had not joined the exodus 

 to the towns, looked on the shooting tenants and the sheep 

 farmers with a jaundiced eye; the thing was new, therefore 

 abominable. The cry went up that the people were turned 

 out for grouse and sheep. A few doctrinaires took it up, a 

 few politicians for their own ends fostered it, and platform 

 spouters, knowing no more of the Highlands than the 



