quartering his ground like a well-trained pointer, he finds almost every bird, and with sure aim strikes down all he finds. The buzzard-hawk seldom takes any but very young birds, but immense numbers of young grouse go to feed his family. Then come the raven and the hooded-crow, numbers of which breed in the rocky burns and fir-woods adjoining the grouse-moors, and live mostly on grouse Foxes, marten-cats, weasels, cats, wild and tame, all hunt for grouse; and a hungry shepherd's dog, always on the hill, does as much as any of them. Be it remembered, these enemies do not respect the close time. A hen sitting on her eggs is easily approached, and whether the mother is eaten, or only the eggs, the hope of that brood perishes equally. The very sheep, driven in great flocks, often break the eggs, while the shepherds' boys must require a good many to furnish the strings of them one meets in every cottage window. (We do not wonder at the little vagabonds for admiring them. They are beautifully marked with brown and black, and as game-looking as the bird, the rich red brown of the shell being very like its feathers.) It speaks the hardiness of the bird that he continues to exist under such persecution. But the grouse not only maintains its numbers; it is increasing. Some proprietors were at first alarmed at the numbers slain by eager Southrons; but now they admit that there is no number which the fair sportsman can kill that is not more than counterbalanced by the trapping of vermin, and preserving, now introduced.

Grouse and salmon are the staple of Highland sport, the everyday enjoyment. Ptarmigan is only found in ground so high and distant, and in a region of such uncertain clime, it must not be relied on for a day of sport. In the best forest, deer-stalking gives more blanks than prizes. Trout-fishing, again, everywhere abundant, is nowhere so much better than is found in many districts of England, as to tempt Southern sportsmen to travel so far.

But let it not be thought that these are the only sports of the mountains. There is capital snipe shooting in the mosses and by inland lochs, at a season when snipe are not met with in England. There is wood-shooting of more variety than England can boast; even if no pheasants swell the battue, black-cock, woodcock, hare, rabbit, roe, and often red deer, are the produce of a lucky day of Highland wood-sport. Most other kinds of shooting are enjoyed at least as well singly, whilst this is distinctively a social sport. There is nothing more cheerful than one of those days, late in the season, when half-a-dozen friends meet at breakfast, and adjourn to the covert side, attended by a couple of old slow hounds, and a few terriers or spaniels.

The

The sharp bracing air, the grass just crisped with frost, the bright sky, the woods ringing to the chiding of dogs, from the shrill squeak of the cocker to the bay of the deep-mouthed hound, the occasional shout of beaters as they flush the game, the pleasant uncertainty of what is to be the next to shoot at-all tend to make this one of the most exhilarating of sports.

Then, on inland lakes, and still more on those sea-lochs of the western coast-those inlets of indescribable beauty, where the weeping-birch and ash drop their tresses from every rocky headland into the deep, and the ocean-stream winds its blue length round some shadowy mountain in the distance, giving dim visions of mysterious solitude and romance-there are sports on a new element. Wild-fowl are there in abundance, stimulating the ingenuity of the sportsman to devise how to approach them. Sea-fishing is at least a variety of occupation, and one which the housekeeper much approves. Shooting and hunting seals (for the latter term suits the practice of some districts) is interesting, and sometimes very exciting, while you persuade yourself you are acting only for the protection of fish in warring against their voracious enemy.

When other sports fail, let the young sportsman fare forth alone, or with some skilful trapper, to make himself acquainted with the habits of what the keeper styles vermin'-foes to the game and to him. He will soon find wherewith to repay the trouble of his observation. Many men walk in deep covert, or among the confused rocks of a mountain cairn, and fancy all around a solitude, or that the air alone is inhabited by its buzzing, shining people; while he whose eyes and ears have been opened, finds proofs of the neighbourhood of interesting inhabitants in the foot-prints that mark the soft mud or the sandy watercourse-in the oak-twigs nibbled so high that only deer could reach themin the scratching of the green moss, which marks the couch of the roe-in the track, beaten like a highway, of the badger. Every old wall, every rocky burn is full of weasels; and the polecat and! marten may be tracked by their prints as surely as the fox or deer. At night there is the wail of the wild-cat, the sharp barking of foxes, and all the sounds peculiar to the birds of night.

Let us take a glance at the otter, by far the most destructive enemy of the grown salmon, and spoiling most effectually the angler's sport; for when you find the fresh trail of an otter about a pool in the morning, you need not fish it for hours; not a fish will stir; so much has their enemy frightened those he has not destroyed. He is a silent and seldom seen creature, whose habits are but little known. An unobservant angler may fish a' whole season on a river swarming with otters, and never see one. Keeping perfectly quiet all day in a concealed hole, having

perhaps

perhaps its only entrance under water, he issues out after dusk, and glides like a ghost down the river to feed. He is an epicure in his diet, and kills many salmon for a single meal, eating only a morsel under the throat, and leaving the remainder for crows and ravens. Indeed the lordly eagle does not disdain the leavings of the otter. The largest we have ever seen was shot while feeding on a salmon killed by an otter. It was a white-tailed eagle; but the golden eagle has the same taste in this respect. When he has fed to satiety, the otter returns as noiselessly to his den as he left it, and generally before daylight. Still, an otter is sometimes seen in the day-time. If you come upon him on the bank unawares, he instantly glides into the water, making scarcely a ripple, and sinking quietly to the bottom, lies looking like a log of wood till you pass, when, rising, he gets his nose above water among weeds or branches, or in the concealment of some overhanging bank. Then, if you have your gun, rush by a circuit to the shallow at the tail of the stream, and wait patiently; for he will undoubtedly show himself there if you remain quiet. When disturbed, they take down stream, seeming to know that, floating down it, they are less conspicuous than if swimming against it. Down he comes, drifting mostly under water, looking like a rag, or a bundle of weeds, till the water becomes so shallow that he must needs foot it; and then he walks quietly, as he does everything. Then you have him at your mercy. But woe to the dog that attacks him! The teeth of the otter close on him and hold on with the grip of a bull-dog. Their sense of smell is very acute. Sometimes, when suspecting danger, but not too much alarmed, the otter will lift himself half out of the water, and standing as it were upright, watch for a time in the direction he expects an enemy, then sink without the smallest splash. It is in this attitude that he has furnished the prototype to the superstitious Highlander, of the 'kelpie' or water-spirit. Otters are very affectionate, and laying down a dead one on the river bank is a sure way of attracting other otters to the place. If caught young, no animal is more easily tamed, and they may be trained to fish for their master. Though the otter will seldom come to a bait, he is easily trapped, from his habit of coming out of the water generally at the same places. Your trap must be strong, however, and firmly fixed, unless you prefer attaching it to a log, which the poor beast, when caught, drags into the river, and which, floating on the stream, generally drowns him, but surely shows his position. Audubon, who knew the creature's habits well, has painted an otter in the act of gnawing off its leg to liberate itself from a trap.

In Scotland the fox holds the first place among 'vermin.' We

do

do not think a mountain-fox would live long before a pack of regular fox-hounds, but certainly in his own country he is as able to take care of himself as his English cousin. What a handsome powerful fellow he is, more like a wolf than a Lowland fox in size and strength! and well may he show such signs of feeding, since his food consists of mutton and lamb, grouse and venison. His stronghold is under some huge cairn, or among the fragments that, strew the bottom of some rocky precipice, perhaps three thousand feet above the sea. In those mountain solitudes he does not confine his depredations to the night; we have encountered him often in broad daylight, and through our deer-glass have watched his manner of hunting the ptarmigan, which is not so neat, but appears quite as successful, as the tactics of the cat. By an unobservant eye, the track of a fox is readily mistaken for that of a dog. The print is somewhat rounder, but the chief difference is the superior neatness of the impression, and the exactness of the steps, the hind-foot just covering the print of the fore-foot; compared with the dog's track, there is much the same difference as a back-woodsman distinguishes between the footstep of an Indian and that of a white man. The fox makes free with a great variety of game, and the demands of his nursery require a plentiful supply. In the hills he lives on lambs, sheep, grouse, and ptarmigan; in the low country, the staple of his prey is rabbits, where these are plentiful; but nothing comes amiss, from the fieldmouse upwards. The most wary birds, the wood-pigeon and the wild-duck, do not escape him. He destroys a considerable number of the young of the roe. The honey of the wild bee is a favourite delicacy; and vermin-trappers have found no bait more effective to lure him than a piece of honeycomb. His nose is very fine, and he detects the taint of human footstep or hand, for days after it has been communicated. Several ways are tried for evading his suspicions. Some trappers place three or four traps in a circle, and leave them well covered for some days without any bait, and at the end of that time, when all taint must have left the traps, they place a bait in the centre. Another way is to place the traps in shallow water, and a bait on some bank where he cannot reach it without running a good chance of treading on them. Even when the enemy is in the trap, the victory is not won, and if the fox escapes, whether whole or maimed, after being trapped, he is too well warned ever to be caught again. Altogether, trapping has never been very successfully practised against the fox in the Highlands, and the old native practice of foxhunting' is still much preferred.

Of all ways of earning a livelihood, perhaps there is none that requires a greater degree of hardihood and acuteness than the

H 2

trade

trade of a vermin-killer in the Highlands-meaning by vermin,' not magpies, crows, and such small deer,' but the stronger and wilder carnivorous natives of the mountain and forest-the enemies of the sheep and lambs. In the Highlands he is honoured with the title of The Fox-hunter;' but the Highland fox-hunter leads a different life, and heads a different establishment, from him of Leicestershire. You come upon him in some wild glen; and in another country you might start with some misgiving at his personal appearance. He is a wiry active man, past middle age, slung round with pouches and belts for carrying the utensils of his trade; on his head a huge cap of badger-skin, and over his shoulder a long-barrelled fowling-piece. At his feet follow three couple of strong gaunt slow-hounds, a brace of greyhounds, rough, and with a good dash of the lurcher, and a miscellaneous tail of terriers of every degree.

Let us borrow a leaf from the same journal which has already been useful to us, describing a successful day with the foxhunter:

'The fox having been too free with the lambs, the sheep-farmer of the glen has summoned the fox-hunter's assistance, and I join him with my rifle. Before daylight the fox-hunter and myself, with two shepherds, and the usual following of dogs, are on the ground, and drawing some small hanging birch-woods near the scene of the latest depredations. While the whole kennel were amusing themselves with a martencat in the wood, we found a fresh fox-track on the river bank below it, and after considering its direction leisurely, the huntsman formed his plans. The hounds were coupled up, and left to the charge of the two shepherds, whilst we started with our guns for a steep corrie, where the huntsman expected we could command the passes. It was a good hour and half, of a jog-trot, which seemed a familiar pace to my companion. We at length turned off the great glen, and up a small, rapid, rocky burn, tracing it to where it issued through a narrow fissure in the rocks, down which the water ran like a mill-race. Scrambling up to the head of the ravine, we found ourselves in the corrie, a magnificent amphitheatre of precipitous grey rocks. The fox's favourite earth was understood to be far up on the cliff, and as only two passes could easily lead to it, we endeavoured to command them both. My station was high up, on a dizzy enough crag, which commanded one of the passes for a considerable way, and sufficiently screened me from all the lower part of the corrie. I had with some difficulty got to my place, and arranged the best vista I could command while unseen myself, and had a few minutes to admire the wild scene below me. It was a narrow corrie, with a little clear stream twisting and shining through an endless confusion of rugged grey rocks. I had not been placed many minutes when a deep bay reached me down the clear morning air. I listened with eagerness, and soon heard the whole pack in full cry, though at a great distance, and apparently not coming quite in our direction. While watching,

however,