164 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



power, is exemplified in the north of England by the 

 immense head of game which, in favourable years, is 

 attained in North Yorkshire and on the adjoining- moors 

 of Durham. The deep peat-deposits and rich heather of 

 Teesdale in Yorkshire, and of the Weardale hills lying 

 adjacent in the county of Durham, are infinitely more 

 prolific of grouse than are the more alluvial moors of 

 Northumberland extending northwards thence, along and 

 beyond the Scottish border. In these latter, the peat is 

 poorer and the heather of less luxuriant growth, alternating 

 with stretches of white grass, rush, and fern. Moorlands 

 of this character, though eminently suitable for black- 

 game — of which they are, in fact, the stronghold — are 

 distinctly inferior as regards red grouse. Where both 

 these species of game are found together, the power 

 of man to increase abnormally the head of grouse is 

 limited. It is not till the Scottish highlands are reached 

 that we find repeated on the solid heather of Perthshire 

 and Aberdeen, some approach to the phenomenal fecundity 

 of Wemmergill and Blubberhouses. 



Man, it seems certain, is the chief cause of grouse- 

 disease through his tampering with Nature's balance, 

 and with the economic conditions of wild-life on the moor- 

 land. Nature fixed a normal stock and designed her own 

 checks upon the undue fecundity of the Tetraonidce. 

 She designed the peregrine and buzzard, harrier and 

 merlins specially to hunt the moors. Man determined 

 to have all the hunting himself, and removed Nature's 

 safeguards. When the above - named birds of prey 

 day by day examined every acre of fell and Howe, 

 both the superabundance of healthy birds and the sickly, 

 if ever the symptoms of disease had appeared, were 

 removed. The disease, as a matter of fact, appears to 



