Growler

“ Just see how steadily Bright carries him along, in his fine carriage. That was a present from his father.
I hope Fred will always be a good boy; and that, when he grows older, he will be able to repay his father for all these good things. Little boys should always remember how much they owe to their parents, and try to please them in every thing.
[10]
[11] GROWLER.
Speak, if you want it; you won’t get it till you do. Why don’t you mind me? Speak, I say. So said Joseph Mecklem to his dog, which he keeps all the while chained to his kennel. Growler is a fine hunter, and a good watch-dog. ”

“ If once he should be able to bring the Black Growler safely within the borders of the city he was confident he would be able to rid himself speedily of the men, whose presence with every passing moment was becoming more difficult to bear. ”

“ The Joker got the best bed, as good-humoured, good-natured chaps generally do, without seeming to try for it. The growler of the party got the floor and chaff bags, as selfish men mostly do—without seeming to try for it either. ”

“ LEONARD. What is it you’re thinking about, Mary. There’s something inscrutable in you. It seems to me that we’re just as uncomfortable as ever. Mother, let’s have a little motherliness or something. I don’t know how it is but I want cheering up. I came from the station most penitentially in a growler—an ancient fourwheeler. It made me think of your father, Mary. How is that good man? Got a job all right? By-the-bye, there’s an extraordinary upset at our place. ”

“ Even if one gets a sun-stroke one does not complain. The sun has a right to be there, and is no interloper, like a free-selector. I can’t understand why free-selectors and mosquitoes should have been introduced into the arrangements of the world.”
“I s’pose the poor must live somewheres, and ‘squiters too,” said Mrs. Growler, the old maid-servant, as she put a boiled leg of mutton on the table. “Now, Mr. Harry, if you’re hungered, there’s something for you to eat in spite of the free-selectors.” ”

“ Growler! What nonsense! Where can we go to?”
“The mill would be nearest, ma’am, and we should be safe there. I’m sure Mrs. Medlicot would take us in.”
“Why should you not be safe here?” said Kate.
“That wretched Chinese hasn’t gone and left us for nothing, miss, and what would we three lone women do here if all them Brownbies came down upon us? Why don’t master come back? He ought to come back; oughtn’t he, ma’am? He never do think what lone women are.”
Mrs. Heathcote took her husband’s part very strongly, and gave Mrs. Growler as hard a scolding as she knew how to pronounce. ”

“ This was a matter of course, and also the reproduction of the Christmas dinner. Mrs. Medlicot was now there, and her son, with his collar-bone set, had been allowed to come out on to the veranda. The house had already been supposed to be full, but room, as a matter of course, was made for Sergeant Forrest and his man. “It’s a queer sort of Christmas we’ve all been having, Mr. Heathcote,” said the sergeant, as the remnant of a real English plum-pudding was put between him and his man by Mrs. Growler. ”

“ Snow squalls and dim light made the navigation of them a difficult matter, but by noon of the following day we had got clear of pack and were in open water 132 with a clear sky to the northward. Numerous solitary pieces of floe and heavy growlers were still dotted about. Growlers are heavy, solid pieces of ice, grey or greenish-grey in colour, which float with their tops just awash. They are consequently difficult to see, especially in poor light, and a close watch has always to be kept for them.
Some of the floes carried passengers in the shape of crab-eater seals. ”

“ This I believe is the usual welcome accorded to travellers to the island of Newfoundland. There is no chart for icebergs, and "growlers" are formidable opponents to encounter at any time. Therefore it behoves us to possess our souls in patience, and only to indulge at intervals in the right to grumble which is by virtue of tradition ours. We have already been here a day and a half, and we know not how much longer it will be before the curtain rises and the first act of the drama can begin.
These boats are far from large and none too comfortable. ”

“ Winter. "I have always heard they were lovely, but I did not think they would add so much to the beauties of the landscape."
Harrow, with its school on the hill, was passed, and caused some interest to the girls. London was reached before they realized it, and they were driven to the Hotel Victoria in two four-wheeled cabs called "growlers"—why, they did not know, unless people "growl" at their lack of comfort in every way; no springs, narrow, high seats, generally dirty, and a worn-out old horse, whipped the most of the time by a very poor driver. ”

“ It is pleasant to see the track of this midnight prowler, this despoiler of cornfields, imprinted in the mud of the lane or along the soft margin of the brook, to know that he survives, though he may not be the fittest. When he has gone forever, those who outlive him will know whether it was his quavering note that jarred the still air of the early fall evenings or if it was only the voice of the owl—if he too shall not then have gone the inevitable way of all the wild world. ”

“ Good fathers are rare in the grouse world. The mother-grouse builds her nest and hatches out her young without help. She even hides the place of the nest from the father and meets him only at the drum-log and the feeding-ground, or perhaps the dusting-place, which is the club-house of the grouse kind.
When Brownie's little ones came out they had filled her every thought, even to the forgetting of their splendid father. ”

“ When hunting near the moor edges we often got a few grouse that were down to the stubble; and in these delightful mixed bags over dogs, how a couple of brace of fine grouse were appreciated.
These mixed bags in the crisp October air, the walking, the variety of sport, though not the quantity, beat the August shooting for enjoyment of sport. You would not know what the dog's point might mean; it might in some ground be hare, snipe, partridge, or grouse. I have made doubles at hare and snipe. The hares were splendid. You may not believe it, but Fred made a double at hares that weighed 22lb. ”

“ It is stated in a pamphlet issued by the Grouse Commission, that one acre of good young heather is enough to keep a covey of grouse for the season. As a matter of fact the moor is lucky when it rears half a grouse to the acre instead of a whole brood. In the author’s belief there is no reason past human powers to remove, why the acre should not breed the brood instead of the half-grouse. ”

“ My reply was, that firstly there was not 150 brace upon the moor, and that if I let it I should be cheating him, and that if I did, shooting the little there was would do me far more damage by the loss of the breeding stock than the value of the £100, or three or four times the £100.
It is difficult to educate people to the knowledge of the fact that the breeding of grouse is like the breeding of other animals or birds, and that grouse are not in some mysterious way showered down by Providence like manna in the desert. ”

“ You see, Sir, ’tis their nater, when they’ve had it all their own way so long, and no one to look after ’em, a year come next June. They take it as the garden belongs to them; they’re like rats in a stack-yard, and you won’t have a thing to call your own by summer. But don’t you take on, Sir,” he went on, seeing the Poet’s visage lengthening; “we’ll nip ’em in the bud in no time. There’s my grandson Dan, a wonderful smart lad to find nests—you give him a sixpence, Sir, or what you please, and he’ll have every nest in the garden in an hour or two. ”

“ The grouse is larger than the partridge, and, when full grown, weighs from twenty to two-and-twenty ounces. The plumage is variegated, and beautifully composed of black, red, and white; the tail being similar to that of the partridge, but a little larger when extended in flight.
The GROUSE perseveringly adhere to those mountains and moors which are covered with heath, seldom or ever descending into the lower grounds. They fly in packs, consisting of four or five brace; and indulge upon intervening tracts of soft mossy ground, particularly in the hotter months of the year. ”

“ Yet the grasshopper warbler, supposed by most people to be one of the most subtle of nest-builders, and by its tiny size, its mouse-like habits, and its concealing colour, so carefully equipped by Nature for security, can be watched home to its nest, as I know from my own schoolboy days, with unerring certainty. It betrays itself in every action. ”

“ She promised, and nestled once more on the eggs. It was true, as he had said, that the nest was some way from the road; it was in fact about halfway between two high roads, which 6 separated as they emerged from a great forest to the northwards, and then ran at a wide angle down a gentle slope of corn-land and meadow. In the hollow near to the western road lay the farmhouse, whose owners had been seen departing by the Skylarks, standing in a little enclosure of yard and orchard; near the other road, but higher up the slope, was another homestead. ”

“ Fowler, in Beverly, Massachusetts, where, in order to get free of a stony soil where pebbles might be dislodged and crush the eggs, the tunnel was carried in nine feet, while neighboring birds in better soil only went a third as far. In one place the burrows will be close to the top of the bluff, in another near the bottom, according as fancy dictates, or the birds have reason to fear this or that enemy. ”

“ But when you have put the young reprobate through all these exercises, you have only succeeded in making gravel walks in a wilderness; and though from those trim avenues you may scatter good seed enough, it perishes on the soil, or withers in a tangle of weeds. After all our labour and seed-scattering, we still complain that it is so hard to reach the heart. ”

“ In habits, haunts, and in the character of its nest 87 and eggs, the Grasshopper Warbler differs entirely from the two species above mentioned. It delights in a dense undergrowth or thick hedge-bottom, where it creeps about more like a mouse than a bird, and is extremely difficult to catch sight of, pausing at intervals to seize an insect or to give forth its remarkable note. Its well-made and compact nest, so different from the slovenly structure of the Sedge Warbler, is placed upon the ground, and carefully concealed. ”

“ Grouse seem to understand the law of protective coloration, and will not flush from the nest until they are sure they have been discovered. Whether deliberately, I do not pretend to say, but frequently, as she rises from the nest, the hen grouse with her wings stirs the leaves so that they fall upon and partly conceal the eggs. When once disturbed she will not let you get so close again. ”

“ When the grain is cleared off, the grouse keep to the slips and corners of brush nearest to the field for some weeks. As the season advances, they take to the fir-woods again, and lose their interest to the sportsmen by becoming in the first place almost impossible to find, and next worthless for the table from their turpentine taste. After the grouse have left the harvest-fields and got back into the woods, the shot-gun sportsman must be quick indeed to shoot as the bird rises and makes for the nearest tall fir. ”

“ These grouse have two color phases, the general tone of plumage being either reddish brown or gray, independent of age or sex of bird. These naturally wild, shy grouse are the kings of the eastern game birds, their wariness and speed with which they will dodge through the trees being the only reasons they have so long withstood the hunting to which they are subjected. During spring, the male struts often, tail expanded into a half circle, head thrown back to meet the upturned tail, and ruff spread so as to form a complete collar. They make a loud drumming by beating the air with their wings. ”

“ It would be a most excellent arrangement of Nature that the grouse go for food wherever it is to be had, if it were left to Nature, but it is not. People on the cultivated farms regard the arrival of the grouse as a great day, in which Providence has sought them out for a blessing, just as the Israelites in the Wilderness thought about the quail, which were possibly merely seeking their own migratory ends, like the starving grouse. Those on the lower moors see increased numbers of grouse, and kill them, knowing that if they do not somebody else will. ”

“ The grouse have taken to bud-eating from necessity—birch buds mostly, with occasional trips to the orchards for variety. They live much now in the trees, which they dislike; but with a score of hungry enemies prowling for them day and night, what can a poor grouse do?
When a belated snow falls, you follow their particular enemy, the fox, where he wanders, wanders, wander's on his night's hunting. Across the meadow, to dine on the remembrance of field mice—alas! safe now under the crust; along the brook, where he once caught frogs; through the thicket, where the grouse were hatched ”

“ Nesting.—The black-and-white warbler usually builds its nest on the ground, tucking it away against a shrub or tree, or even under the shelter of an overhanging stone or bank. The nest is generally concealed among an accumulation of dead leaves which, arching over it, hides it from above. It is made, according to A. C. Bent (MS.) , “of dry leaves, coarse grass, strips of inner bark, pine needles and rootlets, and is lined with finer grasses and rootlets and horsehair.” I have seen a nest made chiefly of pine needles on a base of dry leaves. ”