78 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



to prove that birds sometimes find great difiiculty in collecting a meal of 

 wholesome food. The vast majority of winter crops contain, as we have 

 already said, good dark green or dark reddish brown winter heather, sound 

 wholesome food with a minimum of dead woody tissue. But now and again 

 one finds a crop full of old woody growth of which the food value must be 

 very small. And though the cause of this may sometimes be that the bird 

 is a weakling and has been driven oft' the better feed to live upon whatever 

 it can find elsewhere, yet this inferior food is sometimes found in the crop of 

 a bird which is evidently no weakling. It may then be due to the fact that 

 the moor has been left long unburned, and that all the heather within reach 

 is old and rank. Or the moor may have been over-burnt from every point 

 of view except that of the grazing tenant. In such a case large tracts of 

 young heather are burned again and again, often by runaway fires, to bring 

 the land to grass and kill the heather. In this the grazing tenants of parts 

 of the borderland and of the north of England have been very successful, 

 and heather in many places is a thing of the past, the moors being now almost 

 all white land. Scattered through this, where the tussocky grass has had its 

 way for many years, is a thin growth of useless straggling heather of little 

 value as food for bird or beast. 



For the purpose of drawing up Tables III. and IV. two hundred and eighty- 

 seven specimens of Grouse were examined, and the specimens were fairly evenly 

 Tables III. distributed over the months from April 1906 to March 1907. The 

 '^^ ■ specimens represented birds from no fewer than twenty-seven different 

 counties, so that the results may be regarded as conclusive, so far as concerns 

 the particular period under review. 



In case, however, of the period selected being abnormal, Table V. (p. 79) was 

 prepared to show the crop contents for two complete years, viz., 1906 and 1907. 

 In this Table the figures for the corresponding months are placed 

 together, and an average is struck for each month. It will be seen 

 that these averages show the same general tendencies as are seen in the 

 former Tables, and confirm the view that the figures given in Table III. for 

 July and November 1906 were abnormal, and probably due to exceptional 

 circumstances. 



The total number of specimens examined for the purpose of drawing up 

 Table V. was four hundred and thirty-six, including the two hundred and eighty- 

 seven already included in Tables III. and IV. ; but in 1907 specimens were 



