I am convinced that much may be done in improving grouse ground in the north of Scotland. Make ground habitable and suitable for grouse, and they will come without any further trouble.

Grouse like wettish ground, especially in hot weather, presuming that there is dry ground available for them to nest upon, and feed and sit upon in wet weather.

Now, by judicious surface draining, much may be done.

When the ground slopes from the low hills, the surface water works over the face of the ground, thoroughly soddening it, and rotting the heather that would otherwise grow.

The drains are simply small sheep drains cut on the surface, slantingly across the slope, wherever there is fall enough just to run the water.

The drain intercepts the water, runs it off, preventing it from running over the ground below the drain, and immediately dries the ground immediately below the drain. Heather grows some yards wide, and there the birds will sit and nest, and you have created increased grouse ground.

The expense, in view of the benefit is very trifling. A pair of drainers during the summer months, say a cost of £50, will get over a very large extent of ground.

The proprietor was constantly endeavouring to sell the property, in which event my lease would drop through, and he was impervious to any arrangements as to draining, otherwise I should have done the whole of the Dalnawillan ground. As it was, I did do some odd bits, at my own cost. One beat, near the lodge, I scored over with a few hundred yards of draining, and converted it from a bad to a good beat.

Such draining, of course, improves the ground for sheep as well as grouse.

I presume the time will come when proprietors will see that profit will accrue from cultivating their moors for the purpose of carrying grouse, by endeavouring in all ways to improve the heather by judicious burning and draining, in sufficient amounts to carry as large a stock as is reasonable for the extent of ground. I see no reason whatever, if you offer as favourable conditions to the birds, why they should not be as plentiful on ground A as on ground B; as a matter of fact they will be.