MOOR MANAGEMENT 373 



go into questions of purely scientific interest, still less to set out again at any 

 length the facts established in former chapters. As far as possible, scientific 

 nomenclature will be avoided, and only such matters dealt with as bear directly 

 on the health of moors. 



Briefly stated, the "Grouse Disease" Committee claim to have defined the 

 main — in their opinion the only — primary causes of what is commonly ap','.^^,°f 

 known as " Grouse Disease." Disease." 



During the six years of their investigation they have examined outbreaks 

 of disease in every Grouse-producing county of England, Scotland, and ^vorkof 



Wales. Committee. 



They have dissected birds, not only in the laboratory, but freshly killed in 

 the vicinity of the moor ; they have had the advantage of all the conveniences of 

 modern and recently devised scientific appliances ; they have been kept accurately 

 informed of the outbreaks of disease, and by means of a network of corre- 

 spondents extending to every part of the Grouse area, have been able to observe 

 the epidemic in every phase of its progress. 



Apart from these advantages, not enjoyed by any former body of inquirers, 

 the Committee have been assisted by field observers of experience, who have 

 reported and chxssified variations in local conditions. In the main divisions of 

 research — entomological, pathological, helminthological, parasitical, botanical — 

 into which the Inquiry has resolved itself, it has had the whole-hearted co-opera- 

 tion of a large and experienced staff of investigators, and the help and advice 

 of many leading men of science to whom the subject has directly or indirectly 

 appealed. 



After examining nearly two thousand cases of death from other than natural 

 causes, and the facts and surrounding circumstances of over two hundred strono-yie 

 separate outbreaks of disease, the Committee have arrived at the con- cause'of ^ 

 elusion that the Strongyle worm, and the Strongyle worm alone, is i^^'louse 

 the immediate causa causans of adult " Grouse Disease." ^ Disease." 



The Incjuiry has not confined its energies merely to restating the theory 

 advanced by Dr Cobbold in 1873. It has put the question to the test by 

 proving not only that Grouse under certain specified conditions die by an over- 

 infection of the Strongyle worm, but also that healthy birds can be artificially 

 infected with overdoses of the worm in its larval form, and that, provided the 



' N.B. — Coccidiosis (chap, xi.), the most common cause of mortality in Grouse chicks, can rarely 

 be described as the direct cause of the death of adult birds. 



