And now we are amid the haunts of the red grouse-of the grouse par excellence, variously called red grouse, red or brown ptarmigan, moor or muir fowl, moor cock and hen, and gorcock; the Tetrao Scoticus of Linnæus, Latham, Temminck, &c., the Lagopus Scoticus of Macgillivray, and L'Altagas of Buffon. Of all game birds this is perhaps most highly prized as a table delicacy. Its generic name, Lagopus, is from the Greek, and signifies hare-foot; it has, like its congener the grey ptarmigan, not only feathered tarsi, but the feet also are covered with thick short plumage. This bird is said to be peculiar to the British isles, and hence the suggestion has been made that its specific name should be Britannicus. It is found in the boggy wildernesses of Ireland, as well as among the Welsh mountains, and hilly districts of the more northerly English counties, but in Scotland it is most plentiful, and therefore the generic term Scoticus would seem to be not inappropriate. When fully grown, the plumage of the cock is a rich sienna brown, beautifully waved, mottled, and shaded with lighter tints; sometimes the throat assumes quite a coppery hue, and the belly deepens into black, or nearly so; the tail of this bird is not forked, like that of the black cock, nor is it so long; the feathers are dark brown, barred and edged with red; it has the same rough scarlet spot over each eye as the other members of the grouse family, and the legs are purely or almost white, offering a strange contrast to the rest of the plumage. The female is smaller in size than the male, which commonly weighs about twenty ounces, although it sometimes attains to thirty; she is also of a paler colour, and has the scarlet patch about the eyes less distinct. Various berries, heath tops, and other mountain and moorland plants, form the common food of the red grouse; when cultivated lands are near to its haunts, it will often visit the stacks, or cornfields, and make the farmer contribute to its maintenance. It is not a shy bird, except in districts where it has been much molested, and there it becomes most wary and difficult of approach, lying perdu among the dark brown moss and heath, with which the colour of its plumage harmonizes well it is not easily discovered, except by the nose of the well-trained dog.

In the breeding season, which is early in the year, sometimes even in January, the colours of both cock and hen become brighter and more distinct. Unlike the black grouse, this species is strictly monogamous; it forms a rude nest of straw, dried grass, or leaves in some rocky or sandy hollow, under a tuft of heather or low bush, and lays from ten to fourteen eggs, of a dingy white colour, spotted with brown. The young are exposed to the attacks of many enemies, and are often destroyed, although the old birds defend them with great courage. The hooded crow appears to be one of the greatest depredators of the grouse's nest: "Compared with this crow," says Knox, "the eagle, the buzzard, and even the peregrine falcon herself, are almost innocent, and at least honourable enemies; nay, even the fox is harmless when measured by the same standard." A good bait for this mischievous bird is stated by the same authority to be a trap artfully set in the mock nest of a grouse, and baited with the egg of a gull or any other bird, or the shell, emptied of its contents, and filled with melted fat and nux vomica. We should recommend strychnine

as the more powerful and certain poison, and, from the small quantity necessary to be used, less likely to be detected by the wary depredator, whether furred or feathered.

It is to be regretted that the proper preservation of grouse involves the destruction of many wild creatures, whose habits are highly interesting to the naturalist, if not to the sportsman. To give some idea of the indiscriminate slaughter practised by Highland game preservers, we may state, on the authority of Knox, that on the celebrated Glengary estate, between the Whitsundays of 1837 and 1840, there were destroyed the following numbers of what the keepers call " vermin": -11 foxes; 198 wild-cats; 246 marten-cats; 106 pole-cats; 301 stoats and weasels; 67 badgers; 48 otters; 78 house-cats; 60 white-tailed, golden, and fishing eagles; 1,756 hawks, kites, falcons, and buzzards; 1,913 crows, ravens, owls, and magpies. Grand total of birds 3,667, of quadrupeds 1055, in three years. "The slaughter was carried on," says our informant, " by keepers, who received, not only liberal wages, but extra rewards, varying from £3 to £5, according to their success in the work of extermination." And probably the owner of the estate was well repaid for his expenditure, as we know that the right of shooting over a well-preserved grouse cover is eagerly purchased at an almost fabulous price. Thus, on a station not far from Inverness, as much as five guineas per day has been given for leave to shoot "twixt the light and the dark," and that, too, with the condition that the dead birds should be handed over to the renter. A Yorkshire gentleman, who had two days of this expensive sport, bagged in all 43 brace, which calculated at 3s. 6d. per brace, about the market price-gave to the laird, or his lessees, £7 10s. 6d., besides the £10 10s. paid for the shooting license; and the sportsman, unless he bought his victims back again, had not a single brace to send to his friends as proof of his valorous achievements. We read of another Englishman, who gave to the canny Scot £35 for a week's leave to shoot; but then he, we believe, had liberty to keep the game, as had, no doubt, a third, yet more magnificent in his operations, who paid down £300 for the privilege of blazing away during the whole season over a piece of well-stocked land. He ought to have had relays of dogs and "gillies," with a whole armoury of Mantons, and have been enabled to supply game-dealers out of number, to make it pay.

Talking of game-dealers, how is it that these gentry get so well supplied with grouse on the very day the season opens-often before the day-and that the birds which they sell frequently exhibit no sign of gunshot wounds? Verily, the muir-fowl has other enemies besides those furred and feathered ones just spoken of. The net and the snare are frequently resorted to for their capture; and the nightly poacher reaps a considerable share of the profits of their preservation. It is, however, chiefly in the winter that they are liable to these modes of destruction, as they are then less wild and wary than at other times, and, especially when the snow is on the ground, pack together in considerable numbers, seeking the shelter of the turf-stack, wall, or bank, or any other object which rises above the surrounding level. This may partly account for the circumstance that the London markets are generally well supplied with these birds up to about the middle of March. It has been said that in some districts of Scot

land the landowners make more by their grouse than by any other produce; and we can well believe it, for the lands where these birds are most plentiful, are barren and heathy.

To those who are about to "rent a shooting," we would, with "Craven," recommend circumspection. Not always are the crops so plentiful as they are represented, and the renter may find himself in the case of the individual immortalized by Joe Miller, who purchased an estate warranted to contain a "hanging wood," and found only a gibbet thereon.

"We imagine," says the author of Recreations on Shooting, "that a good many who have taken Highland quarters on the assurance that they would furnish red game, have discovered that the supply was chiefly confined to the carrotty gillies, who go with the ground in capacity of markers-lucus a non lucendo." Old sportsmen can remember the time when the red grouse was by no means scarce in many of the English counties; in none of them now can it be called plentiful, although it was but a few years since that forty-three brace were shot by a keeper on the Yorkshire moors before two o'clock in the afternoon of the 12th of August. Staffordshire and Derbyshire are now probably the southern limits of its range, and from these counties it is being gradually driven by the advance of cultivation, before which it invariably retires. A considerable extent of open mountain and heathery moorland seems necessary to its existence. It loves not woods of birch and reedy swamps, like the black-cock; nor dark pine forests, like the capercailzie; and although it does not retire so far from the ways of men as its near relative the ptarmigan, which haunts the higher Alpine regions, yet must it have "ample 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 red 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 with 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 de 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 detect the latent riches. Fear and Hope are the deities of the moors, else would they lose their witchcraft. A gentleman ought not to shoot like a gamekeeper any more than at billiards to play like a marker, nor with four-in-hand ought he to tool his prads like the Portsmouth dragsman. Shoot in a style equidistant from that of the gamekeeper on the one hand, and the bagman on the other, neither killing nor missing every bird; but in the true spirit of the Aristotelian doctrine, leaning with a decided inclination towards the first rather than the second predicament. If we shoot too well one day, we are pretty sure to shoot as ill another; in short, we shoot like gentlemen, scholars, poets, philosophers, as we are; and looking at us you have a sight

'Of him who walks in glory and in joy,

Following his dog upon the mountain side;'

a man evidently not shooting for a wager, and performing a match for the mean motives of avarice or ambition, but blazing away at his own sweet will,' and, without seeming to know it, making a great noise in the world."

CHARLEY SCUPPER'S RACING YACHT.

CHAPTER III.

Oh, thou vile city! Thou modern Babylon, that pourest forth thy pollutions as upon the great river Euphrates. Thou art blackened with evil, stained with every crime and iniquity imagination can contrive thy waters are too vile and corrupted to be honoured and graced with pure and innocent sports: thy very surface is tainted: fame, virtue, and innocence are alike thy victims, and the football of thy revelling eddies. A curse upon thy sophistry, and upon thy dens of infamy where such is fostered."

Such were the musings of the victimized yachtsman as he sat in the same chair of the same hotel as his friend Harry Vare had found him a few mornings previously.

"Then the warning of my mysterious friend has proved correct," said Charley.

"Entirely so," said Vare.

"It now appears Captain Pivot was the greater scoundrel of the two, and has taken himself off; for Pilch

has split against him since his discharge."

"I never was more deceived in a man in my life," said Charley; "I would have trusted him with anything, so great was my confidence in his integrity. What a designing scoundrel he must have been! Pilch, it appears, could not disguise himself with half the cunning of this artful villain. I declare such an exposure is enough to make a man mistrust his nearest friend.”

"It is indeed," said Vare; "and if I were you I would never again trust the helm in a sailing match to any one. I was surprised to see Captain Pivot there on that occasion; because it is well known you yourself are one of the best sailors in the club."

"Depend on it, Vare, if ever I sail another match, I'll steer the yacht myself; but after such an annoyance as this, it makes one look with abhorrence on match-sailing, and turn away in disgust from a sport which I have ever considered the most innocent, inoffensive, and noble in the world. In the meantime, if I can find this fellow, I will punish him as he deserves.'

"The punishment he deserves," said Vare, "is that which he himself suggested, when artfully casting a slur upon Captain Pilch, to throw us off our guard as to his own villany. He said, 'the man that would do such a thing ought to be towed astern of a steamboat over a sea of boiling hot water.

cup

"I dare say the fellow will keep out of our way," said Charley. "No doubt of it," replied Vare; "but now let us be off to the meeting. I have called a few yachtsmen together this evening, to lay the whole case before them; and I intend publicly to hand the over to you as the rightful owner and indisputable winner of it." "I am much indebted to you, my dear fellow, for your valuable assistance in this unpleasant affair. It is not the cup care for, nor the honours attached to the winning it; they are but a trifling compensation to my feelings after such treacherous conduct on the part of my late captain. That mysterious but honest sailor spoke too truly when he whispered those startling words in my ear, 'You have been cheated and deceived.""

"He did, indeed," said Vare; "although I thought otherwise when you first mentioned it."

We need not weary our readers with a detail of the proceedings at the meeting of yachtsmen. It was just such a meeting as any one would suppose after what had transpired since the exposure. Both Vare and Charley were warmly congratulated on their exertions in successfully investigating the case; and it was suggested that all possible publicity be given to the affair, that yachtsmen might not be further imposed on by such designing characters.

We fancy we hear many a yachtsman of the present day, after reading the second chapter of our tale, exclaiming against the improbability of such an event having ever occurred. Let us warn such men not to be too confiding in their sailing-masters, nor too hasty in condemning us; for, to our own knowledge, jockeyism has been as rife at regattas as at horse races. The plot we have drawn is actually founded on fact; and although the facts are gathered from an event which occurred several years ago, no previous record of the circum

K