of them. Now, since this source of income to keepers, though not over honest in its source, has been, so to speak, legalised by the custom of two or three generations, it seems to me both wise and right to compensate them to some extent if for your own pleasure or profit you do away with it. The obvious and best solution, unless you are prepared to raise their rate of wages, is to encourage them to breed and train retrievers, with a few spaniels or setters. Good retrievers are very scarce and fetch high values; most grouse driving is deficient in interest as well as in result, to those who are fond of hunting dogs, for lack of them. The same keeper who has for years maintained a high-class kennel of pointers will soon take an equal pride in his retrievers; and a couple or two of setters should still be kept for wild days on outside beats, or to assist in finding birds after the big drives.

The dog-man, whom I have urgently recommended as a necessary ally in partridge shooting, is equally if not more necessary to well-conducted grouse driving. To him should be confided the task of finding all the dead or pricked' birds which fall wide of the line of butts or far behind, and it should be his business to remove all excuse for the apparently innocent, but usually crafty, marauding to which some of our friends resort to supplement their bag.

The third difficulty, that of getting enough men to drive, is in some places insuperable. But here we must remember that, as in the case of the kennel question, liberality will do a great deal. A frequent evil to be found in Scotland is that the shooting tenant, having given a rent out of all proportion to the value of his moor, becomes stingy in other matters to recoup himself for his bad bargain, and so between the two conditions he gets less and less sport as time goes on.

As I have urged in another volume,' liberality to all concerned is an essential condition of a pursuit of pleasure such as shooting, and I have always noticed that those who exercise this quality judiciously but freely, and combine with it a firm and kindly discipline, get the best sport. This is eminently the case in Scotland, where the people, specially responsive in nature, will be grateful to you for the one and admire you for the other.

Good wages, a hearty lunch, and a brake or other conveyance for drivers who have to come far from their homes, I have seen work wonders; while with the contrary conditions I have witnessed a general mutiny, and more often a sulky recalcitrant spirit, which, carried into practical effect all day, has entirely The Partridge.

spoilt the sport. Where labour is scarce and drivers difficult to get, it becomes the more necessary to train the few you have to intelligent driving. It is wonderful what can be done with a small number by taking shorter drives, and teaching the men to cross about— that is, while keeping their relative positions in the line, to zigzag so as not to miss the likely bits of holding cover.

To sum up, I commend the study of driving to those who rent or own Scotch shootings, feeling sure that if by any of the means I have tried to indicate they can infuse a keenness for it into the people they have to deal with, commanded and directed by superior practical knowledge, they will be much gratified if not astonished by the result.

CHAPTER IV

ENGLISH DRIVING

SOME twenty years ago Messrs. Blackwood did me the honour to publish in their well-known magazine an article I had written on grouse driving; a subject of which I had considerable experience during the remarkable seasons of 1870-1871, and above all 1872.

In it I tried to portray grouse driving as it was, and is still, on English moors, and to defend and recommend it as a system alike the most attractive to the sportsman and profitable to the stock of grouse. Many letters followed my little effort, and one gentleman, who disguised his identity-of which I am still ignorant-under the signature of 'W. C.,' fell foul of the advocates of driving, and of myself in particular, in the columns of the 'Field,' with all the artillery of envy, malice and uncharitableness, supplemented by an ignorance of the subject that was remarkable even among journalistic contributions to sporting literature.

Sentiment against this 'inhuman butchery' so overcame Mr. 'W. C.' that his feelings found vent in poetry, and the lines in which he may be supposed to have summed up his peculiar views on the matter are really worth reproducing, if only as evidence of his literary power and sporting instincts:

Let gay ones and great

Make the most of their fate

As from mantlet to mantlet they run;

I envy them not—

No, not a jot,

If you give me my dog and my gun.

I should have been concerned to see, even at that date, anyone who elected to run from 'mantlet to mantlet' during a grouse drive, and the light of subsequent experience only tends to confirm the view which I held then, that a dog and a gun are almost as useful to a sportsman engaged in that pursuit as in any other, and none the less if, as appears to have happened to the fortunate 'W. C.,' they have been given to him. Mr. 'W. C.' finally crushed me with the remark that I was evidently more familiar with the pen than the gun, a compliment I enjoyed the more as I had never written anything for publication before, and had used a gun ever since I was strong enough to carry it. It is no longer necessary to defend grouse driving against this kind of onslaught, even when emanating