180 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



As with theories based on the belief that Grouse feed on frost-bitten heather, 

 so with those that are based on their feeding upon corn, very little actual 

 evidence is brought forward from post-mortem, examinations to show that they 

 suflFer any harm at all from the latter food, or that they ever under any cir- 

 cumstances fill their crops with the former. 



In the examination of some score of birds whose crops or gizzards contained 

 traces of corn, only one or two showed any evidence of damage that could be 

 directly attributed to its presence. These cases are more fully discussed in 

 another chapter.^ Some of the birds were obviously piners that had been sick 

 for a considerable time, and there is no doubt that their visit to the cornfields 

 was to some extent involuntary for the reason that they found themselves 

 unable to hold their own with the packs of healthier birds upon the moor. To 

 some extent also no doubt it would be inevitable because from sheer weakness 

 each flight would tend to bring them nearer to the lower cultivated ground. 

 But this use of cultivated ground as a congregating area for sick birds depends 

 largely upon its position with respect to the moor. If even a few habitations 

 intervene, the Grouse, whether healthy or unhealthy, will hardly ever visit 

 the corn, except under urgent pressure of starvation. 



Conditions very conducive to corn feeding exist in parts of southern Perth- 

 shire, where the high ground runs in long and comparatively narrow ridges, 

 while the valleys between the ranges of hills contain open areas of farmed 

 arable land right in the very midst of the lower beats of the moors. 



For many reasons such low ground, whether farmed or not, must always 

 be to some extent less healthy than the high ground, and the cornfields the 

 least wholesome parts of all. First, because all the weakly birds on the moor 

 tend to leave the high ground for the low, thus turning the stubble fields into 

 concentration centres. Here, too, large packs of healthy birds making raids 

 from the high ground not only themselves foul the lower ground with an 

 excessive amount of loose dropj^ings full of nematode eggs and unhatched 

 larvae, scoured from them by the irritating corn husks, but also run a great 

 risk of filling themselves with corn which has been fouled by the convalescent, 

 sick, and more permanently diseased occupants, whose droppings are even 

 more abundantly full of nematode eggs than are their own. This is no doubt 

 the point to which Colquhoun refers when he says : " My opinion is that 

 corn is very unwholesome food for Grouse. Let any person examine the 



' Vide chap. iv. pp. 81-82. 



