As with partridges, a great benefit has followed the fashion of driving grouse, instead of walking them up, with setters and pointers: for the familiar reason that the old birds come first to the guns and are the first to be shot. If not shot, these old birds would not allow the young ones to nest near them, and would drive them far afield: and another advantage is that the young birds which are spared are the most productive. Moorland keepers at the end of the season are at pains to kill off old cocks, which are such enemies to the peaceful nesting of the young birds; and many are their devices for stalking and calling them to their doom. Except when feeding, the wary old birds like to be able to look all about them, and perch on walls and hillocks, whence, holding their heads high, their eyes may sweep afar for foes. Unlike partridges, they are not content with the grain in the stubble, but will perch on the stooks at harvest-time, to attack the sheaves. * * * * * Rewards for Cubs Until the last field of corn is cut, cubs are spared their introduction to the joys and sorrows of hunting; but at the end of harvest their time is at hand. Few keepers look forward to the coming of hounds for cubbing. When hounds do come there is nothing more disappointing to the keeper than that they should not find the cubs, of whose dark deeds he has been complaining all the summer. Not only does he lose the prospect of a sovereign reward, but the cubs are still at large to carry on their havoc, while he may appear to have been crying wolf where there were no wolves; the loss of the sovereign is much less to him than the loss of his credit and the prospective loss of his birds. Different hunts have different methods of rewarding keepers whose cubs are found by hounds. One hunt works on the irrational plan of giving a keeper a sovereign for each litter found, and ten shillings extra if a cub is killed. This is almost as much as to ask the keeper to take steps towards handicapping the cubs when the pack presses. The keeper knows how important it is that the young entry shall taste blood at this time, and he knows that if scent fails, the best way to ensure a kill is to allow the cub to run to ground. Instead of completely stopping an earth, he arranges a slight barricade of twigs; and then he may know, by whether the cub has broken the barricade or not, if it has run to ground. He takes care to have a spade and a pick-axe close at hand. The well-intentioned reward really ends in spoiling sport. * * * * * "Various"--the Landrail