The Twelfth

First there were reports that early summer rains had killed off the young grouse on the Scotch, English and Welsh moors. Then there were reports that the grouse had survived the wet, were as plentiful as usual. As The Twelfth, the historic August opening of Britain's grouse season approached, the reports turned dismal again. ''Grouse disease" had thinned out the coveys. Day before The Twelfth the moors were reported soggy, dank. Consequently Scotsmen anxiously assembled at the Edinburgh and Glasgow railroad stations to note how many rich Englishmen and Americans were coming up from London for that most decorous of outdoor sports, grouse shooting from butts.

Scotland, where the sport is best organized, has some 3,000 heather-covered, grouse-infested moors for rent. In prosperous years the gross income from rents has run to $7,500,000. Payments to lodge keepers, beaters and handy men total about the same. An average sized moor costs a hunter all told about $5,000 a month for the season. That is, in Scotland. If he merely wants grouse and is willing to forego social eeclat, he may go on to the Orkneys. There he may rent a stand for as little as $300 cash or its equivalent in bottled whiskey or tobacco.

Scarcely half the grouse moors were rented this year, and comparatively few of those were occupied on The Twelfth. King George, an excellent shot, whose favorite stand is Geallaig moors near Balmoral Castle, remained in London. But he received by express a box of the first day's kill on the royal moors.

Princess Mary and the Duke & Duchess of York, however, were in the North; and many a Lord.

Rich Americans on the moors The Twelfth, or ready to go there, included as usual, John Pierpont Morgan, Clarence Hungerford Mackay & wife, Bernard Mannes Baruch, Herbert Pulitzer, Grayson Mallet, Prevost Murphy.

Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson and his aide, Capt. Eugene Regnier, rented a small farmhouse for the balance of August. Ambassador Walter Evans Edge invited a large party to his place in Forfarshire. Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes was invited to the Duke of Montrose's estate, which an engagement with General John Joseph Pershing, also a keen visitor to the moors, prevented his accepting. The General and the Ambassador were inspecting War battlefields.

For lack of bags to report last week, newsgatherers reported on field costumes. Gillies, who could get no work from the rich visitors, and moor owners, who could get no renters, went grousing on their own. Grouse they killed were selling last week in Edinburgh at $5 per brace, in Glasgow at $7.50. Those were remarkably low prices for early in the season. Late in November, prices come down. It is then, just before the grouse season closes and after the rich renters have killed the female and young grouse, and gone away, that the patient Scotsmen go afield. They know that the old cock grouse have been hiding all autumn in the hills, will come down for plentiful feeding, easy killing.

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