70 



BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



statistics, showing the results of their depredations ou 

 moorland game, may perhaps be appropriate. The ground 

 vermin — fox, stoat, and weasel — are bj^ far the most destruc- 

 tive, and their reduction by trapping is essential to keeping 

 up a fair head of game. The hill-fox, which has cubs at the 

 time Avhen the Grouse are sitting, is the most deadly enemy 

 to them, taking the hen birds oS their eggs ; but the stoat 

 and weasel, being far more numerous, are perhaps almost 

 equally destructive in the aggregate. If these three pests 

 (I refer, of course, to non-hunting districts), and the Corbies, 

 or Carrion Crows, are kept down, probably a few Peregrines 

 would not do a very perceptible amount of damage, and the 

 small Hawks even less. The following figures, show^ing the 

 quantity of game killed on the same gi'ound during two 

 equal periods — (1) without trapjnng at all, and (2) with 

 regular trapping all the year round — are sufficiently eloquent 

 on the subject : 



The grouse-disease is unquestionably the price we have to 

 pay for maintaining the stock of moor game at a much higher 

 level than Nature ever intended ; but, on the whole, we are 

 no doubt very greatly the gainers. For one season of bad 

 disease, we have perhaps five or six of an artificial or extra- 

 natural abundance. 



In corroboration of the above deductions, it may be 

 interesting, in winding up these rambling notes on a bird 

 which possesses such importance to sportsmen, to mention 

 that in Norway, where the closely allied Willow-Grouse 

 {Lofjopus svbalpino) is extremely abundant, grouse-disease 

 is practically unknown. The Norwegian species is no- 



