NovTES ON THE Brirps oF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 97 
parasites have been identified in other specimens of Black- 
game which have been examined. 
The RED GROUSE (p. 326). When King George IV. 
visited Scotland in the autumn of 1822, the grouse supplied 
to the royal dinner-table at Holyrood came from Sanquhar : 
James Kennedy, in his first book of poems, commeniorates 
this in the following lines :— 
‘“ Lang will heath-clad, lofty Lowthers 
Shed the halo of its fame; 
Sportsmen tell a sportsman brother 
Here was killed the Royal Game.”’ 
The shooting season of 1910 was an excellent one in 
some parts of the county. At Langholm, where the moors 
are particularly well studied from a sporting point of view, 
the remarkable total of over ten thousand Grouse, shot be- 
tween 12th August and 5th October, was obtained. The 
best day’s bag was one thousand one hundred and ninety, 
killed off Middlemoss (Ewes). The year 1911 proved even 
better on the Langholm moors, where upwards cf twenty 
thousand five hundred Grouse were shot before the end of 
October. Some of these moors extend into Roxburghshire, 
and the bag of two thousand five hundred and twenty-three, 
killed by eight guns at Roanfell on 30th August, cannot be 
claimed as a Dumfriesshire record. On Middlemoss (Ewes) 
one thousand three hundred and thirteen were shot on 4th 
September, 1911, beating the record of the previous year 
by one hundred and twenty-three birds. The year 1912 was 
an exceptionally good year for Grouse in Dumfriesshire, and 
one thousand three hundred and ninety-one were killed at 
Middlemoss (Ewes) on 28th August. Good years are often 
followed by disease and it is remarkable here, although 
strictly outside the boundaries of Dumfriesshire, that only 
one hundred and ten Grouse were killed in the day in 1913 
at Roanfell (Roxburghshire) where, on 30th August, 1911, 
the record bag for Scotland bad been obtained. It was hoped 
in 1921 that the good bags of 1912 might be repeated locally 
but, although extraordinarily good sport was obtained farther 
north in Scotland, the Dumfriesshire moors fell far short, in 
most places, of their average annual totals of Grouse. 
