STKAY NOTES ON GROUSE-DISEASE. 69 



condition. For a few days after its attack, the grouse shows 

 little or no visible change externally. When emaciation 

 sets in, death follows almost immediately, within a few 

 hours. 



The best indication of the presence of disease in this 

 form appears to be the manners of the old birds and their 

 proportion to the young. In the year in question (1884) 

 I was at first a little deceived by appearances on the Twelfth. 

 Expecting to find the hills almost bare, we only took out 

 half an ordinary supply of cartridges. Consequently, when, 

 between three and four o'clock, having then fired my last 

 cartridge, and with some of the best hours of the day still 

 to come, I sat down with twelve brace of Grouse, a Teal and 

 a couple of Golden Plover — a fair bag on that ground in any 

 year — I felt inclined to anathematize the exaggerated reports 

 of disease. Exaggerated they certainly seemed, for birds 

 had the appearance of being tolerably numerous, and signs 

 of disease but few. I felt sure, had cartridges lasted, of 

 getting twenty brace. But the next time we went over the 

 same ground, the true state of the case became conspicuously 

 apparent. With plenty of cartridges and a long day, it was 

 only by hard work I managed to get together five and a half 

 brace, and they all old birds ! The fact is, this form of 

 disease at first helps the gun. Old birds (broodless) which 

 would normally spin away, a dozen at a time, at two or 

 three hundred yards, now rise singly and just within shot. 

 But as soon as these are killed, it is all over. Ichabod ! 

 There are none to take their places. 



So matters remained throughout August and September. 

 Of young broods there were simply none, and it was but 

 labour lost to hunt for them : the young had evidently been 

 the first to succumb. But the disease appeared to have 

 been local, and had not perhaps affected any very great 

 extent of ground, for in October, on the general movement 

 or "re-distribution" of grouse which annually occurs in 

 that month, our stock quickly rose to a normal level, and 

 continued so for the rest of the season. 



As the subject of " vermin " has been alluded to as one 

 of the factors in the production of disease, the following 



