Customs that are the very negation of British sport are
becoming established even in Scotland. Gangs of alleged sportsmen, who have no love of the place or knowledge of its ways, take a moor on the understanding that everything is provided. It is wickedly alleged that one of these persons brought no gun and made the petulant protest that he under- stood everything was to be provided. Such groups or syndi- cates may have nothing whatever to do with the art of the sport ; it may be they do not know a grey hen from a grouse or a snipe from a sandpiper. Natural history is a closed book. They like to make a frequent noise with a lethal weapon discharged straight in the direction of a flying bird or coursing hare ; and in ease the direction should be too rough, one or two specialists at game or pigeons are engaged to bring the bag up to standard. This sort of sport is often British only in the sense that it takes place on British soil, and it is of quite a different nature from the pursuit of the " record bag " by English landowners or syndicates ; but both are examples of the unpleasant paths into which sport has been allowed to divagate.
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