CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 
65 
scope and verge enough ' for flight and feeding ground, 
and seldom will it breed and build, except it be miles away 
from human habitations and scenes of busy industry. 
Several attempts have been made to introduce it into 
counties from which it has disappeared, but without success ; 
it will not remain within easy shooting distance, and it is 
perhaps valued all the more on this account. Like a coy 
beauty, it must be sought for, and wooed, before it can 
be won ; and who shall say it is not worth the winning ? 
^ Shooting Grouse after Eed Deer,' says Christopher 
North, ' is for awhile at least felt to be like writing an 
anagram in a lady's album, after having given the finishing 
touch to a tragedy or an epic poem. ' Tis like taking to 
catching shrimps on the sand with one's toes, on one's return 
from Davis's Straits in a whaler that arrived at Peterhead 
wdth sixteen fish, each calculated at ten tons of oil.' Now 
it is all very well for that ^ old man of the mountains ' to 
talk thus, for he was, or would have us believe that he was, 
a mighty hunter ; but those who live on the wrong side of 
the border, and cannot go deer-stalking whenever they 
have a fancy for venison, must content themselves with 
smaller game, and find shooting Red Grouse to be tolerably 
satisfactory sport. Old Kit is irate against such as go 
forth for the purpose of wholesale slaughter, and must 
needs bag three hundred brace from sunrise to sunset of 
the first day of the moors. We say nothing about the 
kind of emulation, or esprit cle corps, which leads a shooter 
to bag as many head of game as he possibly can, and 
when his ^ blood is up,' to commit havoc which he likes 
not to think about in his cooler moments, although this 
perhaps should be taken into account; but we do say 
that in Grouse, as in every other kind of shooting, except 
where the destruction of noxious and mischievous animals 
is the object aimed at, it is most reprehensible to * blaze 
away' right and left, and do one's best to depopulate 
either a wild moorland or a carefully kept preserve. The 
true sportsman will say with our authority Christopher, 
* Commend us to a plentiful sprinkling of game ; to ground 
which seems occasionally barren ; and which it needs a fine- 
instructed eye to traverse scientifically, and therefore to 
E 
