HEATHER - BURNING 399 



"canopy" with which to keep out the withering effect of the cold winds and 

 frost, and he will find a very different state of aliairs. Careful examination will 

 show that the close-growing six- to fifteen-year-old heather with a thick matted 

 covering afl'ords the only feeding at this time of year, and that even here the 

 shoots are green, not at the top, but half way down the stem, where they are 

 protected from the cold. 



It is at this time that the real test of moor management is seen, and a little 

 careful study will prove to demonstration certain facts not found in the philosophy 

 of the "small patch" enthusiast. Granted the premises set out above. The test of 

 it follows that, if the moor is being worked on a hundred years' J^anage- 

 rotatiou, the total amount of spring - feeding heather, that is to '"*^°*- 

 say, the amount that lies between six and fifteen years of age, is roughly 

 9 per cent, of the total area of the moor. If the moor is burned on a fifty 

 years' rotation, which is the rotation of the majority of moors to-day, the 

 amount is 18 per cent, of the total area. If, however, the heather is burned 

 on a fifteen years' rotation, the rotation the Committee advise, the amount 

 of edible heather represents nine years out of a total of fifteen, i.e., 60 per 

 cent, of the total acreage of the moor. That is to say, if we admit the early 

 spring months to be the critical time in the life history of the Grouse — no 

 great admission seeing that it is in spring that disease invariably appears — 

 we shall realise that a well-bui-ned moor can carry seven and a half times 

 the stock of the moor burned on a hundred years' rotation, and nearly four 

 times as much as that of the average moderately burned moor. 



These figures may possibly be challenged ; but with regard to the area 

 burned the proof is perfectly simple. Employ a surveyor to measure up the 

 patches of a strip or patch-burned moor, burned in 1910 — a very good burning 

 year — compare the acreage with the total area ; the result will astonish many 

 landlords who habitually boast that they burn one-tenth of their moor every year. 



It will perhaps be argued that the six- to fifteen - year heather is not the 

 only spring feed, that even the stout stick heather will present occasional 

 green shoots, and therefore aflord some small measure of sustenance to the 

 Grouse in the spring-time. This is true, and it is a fact that, faute de mieux, 

 Grouse are able to exist on an unburned moor. It must, however, be 



More food 



remembered that they require probably twice or three times as much required in 



•''■'■ •/ winter. 



of the sapless, partly dried-up heather of April as they do of the more 

 succulent shoots of summer and autumn. The weights of crop contents show that 



