1 and varied ground which, lying next to or forming part of the moorland proper, leads you by the pleasantest of transitions to the cultivated land. This is the Bohemia of shooting-the tract where we have all spent some of the pleasantest of our days in circumventing its distinctive denizens, or in making a mixed bag without the aid of the organisation of a regular shooting party. Here sits the capercailzie and lurks the roe; here abides the blackcock and crouches the hare; here stalks the pheasant and sleeps the woodcock; while from above and below the grouse and the partridge meet on the heathery slopes and rushy bottoms of this debatable land, the fringe of the moor. Driving the woods for black-game and anything else that may be in them provides the pleasantest of shooting days, liberally tinged with the element of surprise, which is as essentially an integral part of sport as it is admitted to be of wit. I quite agree with the late Mr. Bromley-Davenport, than whom no better sportsman ever rode, shot, or fished, that it is hateful to know exactly how much game there is in a covert, how many birds in a turnip field. All interest is gone the moment the element of uncertainty or surprise is removed. The great charm of the moor edge is its variety. The long plantation of larch or fir, standing ankle-deep in yellow grass or breast-high in bracken, breaks imperceptibly into a bed of heather, dotted with young trees, which in turn gives way to swampy hollows or rushy wastes, not infrequently bordering a field or two of stubble or turnips before the wood or moor begins again. Small coverts, great open brakes of fern, and deep ravines where the heather can scarce cling to the steep sides between the rocks, succeed each other in delightful confusion, the whole forming an agglomeration of various sorts of covert, which used to be called by the old keeper at Drumlanrig by the expressive term of whatnots.' Many charming days have I enjoyed in years gone by among those 'what-nots,' where sometimes. twelve or thirteen varieties of game, from the fallow deer to the jack-snipe, were killed in one day, and great were the numbers of the black-game. The two distinct kinds of black-game driving are determined by the nature of the ground. In the one your company of well-organised drivers sweeps a succession of so-called pastures, though the herbage on them is not of the best, differing but little, except for the ' Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the principal seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, which stands on an estate of 175,000 acres. frequently intersecting stone walls and marked inclosures, from the moor itself. In the other, sometimes with an imposing but casual array of beaters, suggesting somewhat the levies of a pretender or an outlaw, but more often with the unaided skill of a half-dozen of keepers and gillies, the woods are ranged towards you as you stand in carefully selected spots, 'passes' where the blackcocks are sure to cross, and where you are equally on the look-out for a woodcock or a roebuck. The former style of black-game driving has been undoubtedly carried to the greatest perfection, and with the best results, on the Duke of Buccleuch's Dumfriesshire estates. Here, at Sanquhar or Wanlock Head, lie the great stretches of rough pasturepart grass, part rushes, part heather-which favour a great stock of these birds, and which, lying between the oat stubbles and the luxuriant heather, afford them the variety of food that this specie seem in particular to affect. Here, ensconced behind a high wall, after, perhaps, removing the topmost course of stones to clear your view in front, having reached your places in strictly enforced silence, and weighed the consequences of any mistake, such as killing a greyhen or showing yourself unduly, which may expose you to a fire of time-honoured chaff, you may |