Fox's Earth to Mountain Tarn 



of the counting-house. His son, who practises 

 from behind mock butts, at grouse set free from 

 traps a fitting school for those without sporting 

 instincts, with no innate love of hill scenes or 

 wild life, in whose hands money alone has placed 

 a gun to work mischief. And, having knocked 

 over the needful percentage to qualify for serious 

 work, the enfant terrible shifts behind a real butt, 

 and shows his skill on the birds, driven up to him 

 by an army of hirelings. 



Under such auspices, whose blight, unfor- 

 tunately, fell on those who ought to have known 

 better, the killing waxed in virulence. Each 

 creature not a grouse was a bete noir. Mercy 

 was neither shown nor asked. Not asked, because 

 wild creatures do not whine, but take the billet 

 within the bullet, and die, free and bold-spirited, 

 as they have lived. And the mournful conclusion 

 seems to be, that the work was done only too 

 well. 



A correspondent remembers a marten at Bar- 

 caldine, in Argyllshire, being thrown on the hall 

 table in 1865-6. That is a long time ago. 

 What matters fifty, forty, or thirty years ? Cer- 

 tainly nothing to the marten. The vital part was 

 the killing out, the throwing on the hall table 

 of what was so much more interesting than that 

 for whose sake it was killed. This feeling seems 

 to have been present in the writer, who person- 

 ally inspected with boyish curiosity something 



43 



