394 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



immediate aim — better cover for shooting over dogs ; but they gained also a 

 second and not less noteworthy result, a drop both in the average bag 

 of Grouse, and in the grazing value of the hill-ground, a thing neither 

 foreseen nor in any way desired. 



Founded on latter-day experience the reason for this is not far to seek. 

 In the dogging days the long heather was the ideal. " Keepers' delight," applied 

 to 3-foot heather, is still a recognised and but too often well justified term. 

 The keeper, acting up to his lights and wishing to show the best sport on 

 the Twelfth, not only stopped the shepherd from burning big stretches of heather, 

 but stopped him from burning the heather at all. In books of sport in the year 

 1863 places are mentioned — as splendid Grouse ground — "fifteen hundred acres 

 of heather without a single break ! " This method of heather culture was 

 admirable for approaching wild birds ; in these jungles a covey once settled 

 could be massacred at ease with "snap-hance" or breech-loader. Unfortunately, 

 the change of methods was not equally satisfactory with regard to the health 

 of the moor, and a very rude awakening was not far distant. 



A few lucky seasons, with a heavy crop of heather seed for food in winter 



and early ripening shoots in spring, gave in certain favoured districts an 



increase of bags by improving the conditions for approaching the 



of "Grouse birds: then a cold summer followed by a winter with late sprinsc 



Disease." i o 



frosts, and a seasonal shortage of food intensified by an overplus of old 

 stick heather, led to the inevitable result — a general outbreak of disease. 



As early as 1857 there were reports of heather on certain moors " man high" 

 — by the sixties the whole effect of the shepherds' burning had passed away, 

 Failure of ^^^ ^^ many districts where the non-burning practice was at its height, 

 grazing. ^^^ Only Were there few birds and disease frequently recurrent, but the 

 graziers' complaint became more and more common — that there was not enough 

 young heather and grass to feed the sheep-stock. At this period the relations 

 between sporting tenants and sheep-farmers became so strained that big sheep- 

 farmers, then a well-to-do class, used in many districts to rent the shooting as 

 well as the orazing; of their holdings, and so sret the control of heather-burning 

 into their own hands. 



In 1871 and 1873 the Game Laws Commission investigated the relations of 

 the sporting and farming interests, and some very interesting facts were elicited. 

 Not the least important of these facts was the similarity of heather conditions 

 required for sheep and for Grouse. This was brought out by the evidence of farmers 



