GROUSE AND BLACK -GAME SHOOTING. 115 



is a simple business.* You have only to make yourself 

 master of the places they frequent. They may always 

 be found near a short thick rush, easily seen on the 

 moor, the brown seeds of which form the principal food 

 of the young packs. When your dogs point near these 

 rushes, and especially if they " road," you may be almost 

 sure of black-game. The old hen generally rises first, 

 the young pack lying like stones : no birds are more 

 easily shot. 



The old cocks, even in August, are never very tame : 

 for although, where the heather or rushes are long and 

 rank, they may lie tolerably well at first, yet even then 

 they are sure to rise very high, and take a long flight, 

 generally quite beyond your beat : they are sometimes 

 found singly ; at others, in small flocks, from six to ten. 

 Their food on the moor consists of cranberries ; another 



* Many gentlemen are now beginning to shoot the hens, observing 

 the great increase of black-game and decrease of grouse in some districts. 

 This may in part be attributed to the advance of cultivation ; but I 

 cannot help thinking the black-game have a good share in driving off the 

 grouse as I know of one instance where the former were killed off, and 

 the latter again returned to their old haunts. I believe it is also more 

 than suspected that the capercailzie, wherever they are introduced, have a 

 great inclination to dispossess both. It is a curious fact, that the young 

 capercailzie thrive better under the foster-care of the grey-hen than if left 

 to their natural protectress. When a capercailzie's eggs are discovered, 

 they are divided among several grey-hens, whose nests the keepers search 

 out for this purpose. The grey-hens, however, will not sit upon them, 

 unless some of their own eggs are also left. But when the young are 

 hatched, they pay equal regard to both; and it is not until the capercailzie 

 are fully grown that they drive away their step-mothers, who dread them 

 as much as hawks. 



