GROUSE DISEASE. CHAPTER I. Let others love the city, And gaudy show at sunny noon Give me the lonely valley, The dewy eve and rising moon, Fair beaming and streaming Her silver light the boughs among. THE national love of sport has made Highland shootings such an important element in the value of estates, that it is surprising moors are so generally neglected. Since grouse disease depreciates this class of property, we will define its cause or causes and remedies. We do not agree with those who hold that the malady is a mystery beyond solution; but, on the contrary, that moors are in many cases sacrificed by carelessness, indifference, and the unwise policy of destroying all birds and beasts of prey alike, and not burning the old heather periodically. We are convinced that were landowners to apply the same careful attention to moors as they do to farms, very little would be heard of grouse disease. The marvel is that it is not more prevalent considering how many of the grouse ranges are mismanaged by allowing the growth of unwholesome food for the birds and upsetting the organization of nature, instead of being guided by her unerring laws. The penalty of such folly is, as a matter of course, grouse disease. Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your Teacher. The We took a great deal of trouble to get trustworthy information as to the prospects of the moors for 1882, and we published the result in the Press in July. Since then the tidings as to the as to the crop of grouse have fully confirmed our predictions; and the gloomy forebodings of some discontented persons have been proved to have been greatly exaggerated. Spread over so large an area of the British Islands as the red grouse is, the reports naturally vary considerably. accounts received by us, together with the consignments of birds to the South, and the Press reports, testify that on the high grounds sport has been fairly good, whilst on the low-lying moors grouse were not only plentiful but in excellent condition, with few exceptions,-all, in short, that the most cynical gunner could have desired. On some of the very high lands the birds were not altogether free from disease, which was more prevalent in Ayrshire, Perthshire, Invernessshire, and Caithness. On the English and Welsh moors sport has been much above the average, and far better than in 1881. A few birds were found dead, which the sportsmen attributed to indigestion. There is hardly any kind of rural sport of which the characteristics are so so picturesque as those of grouse shooting. It is at the golden time of the year, when everything in nature is so beautiful, that we seek out the heath-frequenting broods; when the dear old straths and glens, the sweet heather air, and the birch and hazel, the ferns and ash saplings, the wild lakes and streams and foaming falls, the hills and mountains, are at their best. Truly "Caledonia stern and wild" is the El Dorado-the happy chosen land of the shooter. grouse Hie away, hie away, Where the copsewood is the greenest, Where the lady fern grows strongest, Over bank and over brae, Hie away! Hie away! Even in the depth of winter shooting has its attractions. The world of nature is more open to us. Especially lovely are the lakes and meres when frost has bound the land in its iron chain, when the hills and vales are clad in snow, and the wild fowl peal forth sweet music to the whistling winds as they 4 WINTER SHOOTING. tread and break the frozen rotting reeds glittering in the clear sunlight. Verily there is a charm in winter shooting that the true sportsman feels as he pursues his quarry through the snow, under a dark blue sky or a bright moonlight night, as he sees coot, teal, and widgeon on the crystal lake, and hears overhead the call-notes of wild-fowl as they fly from mere to mere. For pleasant memories of sport give us the hills and glens and lakes and meres of bonnie Scotland, whether in summer, autumn or winter-they are ever full of interest to the sportsman and naturalist. At times, too, the shooter falls in with whole battalions of wild swans, although we admit that his chances of bagging That lovely thing, Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat, are few and far between. They are seldom to be met with except in severe winter; but as their flight is very low they are not difficult of approach. In all animated nature there is hardly a more brilliant sight than a flight of swans, their spotless robes glistening in the clear golden light of the winter's sun. We can never forget the thrill of delight when we shot for the first time one of these magnificent creatures in the Cromarty Frith. It was a fine specimen, of nineteen pounds weight, with splendid plumage. Although we considered this as an epoch in our life we have often almost repented the destruction of so lovely a bird. The eager demand for grouse-moors, and the enor RENTS OF GROUSE MOORS. 5 mous rents now given, are evidence of the rapid growth of the world's wealth, and that the interest taken in the feathered denizens of the hills is not flagging. There are many examples of the marvellous increase of rents within the last forty or fifty years, as the following statement condensed from the "Quarterly Review" shows. In the counties of Perth, Inverness, and Ross, Highland properties have doubled in value within the last forty-five years. The shootings of Glen Urquhart were in 1836 let for one hundred pounds; they now produce a rental of about two thousand pounds. The Glen Morison moors were rented for one hundred pounds in 1835; they now bring in nearly three thousand pounds a year. The shootings attached to the Erchless Castle, as well as those of Fasnakyle, may be taken as fair examples of the rise of shooting-rents. These have increased at least twenty times in value in the course of as many years. One of the first shootings let was Monalia or Coignafearn, on which moors the river Findorn has its source. They are the property of the Mackintosh, and were first let to a Mr. Windsor at a rent of thirty pounds, with five pounds given back as a luckpenny. Some twenty years ago these shootings were let at rents varying from three hundred pounds to five hundred pounds. The Aberarder moors were on lease forty years ago at seventy pounds; the rent has been for years back, on an average, four hundred pounds. Stratherrick, for years let at an exceedingly |