SPORT IN BUTE. 209 



day in hollow trees, but never under the slates or leads of 

 houses or out-buildings, the favourite refuge of the two other 

 species of British bat. I have one of the Henley great 

 bats stuffed, and, barring its colour (a rich chestnut), it is 

 precisely like a giant of the smaller common kind. 



The top of the old tower of Kames is a city of bats. On 

 raising the lead sheeting about the beginning of summer, we 

 discovered hundreds both of long-eared and little bats, each 

 female having her piccaninny attached by its tiny claws to 

 her breast. When hunting in the twilight, they carry their 

 young one too ; and the little creature is so deftly and firmly 

 fastened as not in the least to incommode the parent, or hinder 

 her success in moth-hunting. The mothers nurse their young 

 ones in this way, which are the most horrid imps it is pos- 

 sible to fancy. 



The grousing of this island would never suit many of the 

 sportsmen-migrants who crowd our moors in August and 

 September. The battue system from the south has been so 

 successfully applied, even to Scotch moors, that in all our 

 first-class ranges the difference between good and bad sports- 

 men or good and bad dogs is scarcely noticeable. If the man 

 is a fair shot little else will be required of him ; while his 

 dogs, if superior ones, are wasted on such ground, and may 

 even have their mettle slacked, their hunting powers weakened, 

 and their instinct dwarfed, from finding multitudes of birds 

 without working for them. To my mind, sixty or eighty 

 brace killed on these swarming beats deserves to be placed in 

 the same category as a pheasant-drive, or shooting rabbits in a 

 teeming warren. 



The moors which give most pleasure and satisfaction to a 

 true and able sportsman are those which, with the aid of 

 first-rate dogs, will afford a bag of from twenty to thirty-five 

 brace. On such ground he can watch with delight the instinct 

 which his high-couraged and keen-scented dogs throw into 

 their work ; his own knowledge of the sport and his walking 







