RED GROUSE. 433 
and are frequently picked up dead. The cause of this disease has given 
rise to much controversy. The birds which have died of it are frequently 
found, when dissected, to be infested with a small parasitic worm in 
the intestines. Some sportsmen maintain that these parasites are the 
cause of the weakness and subsequent death of the Grouse; others, on the 
other hand, assert that the abundance of parasitic worms is only asymptom 
of, and caused by, the diseased state of the bird. Grouse, in common 
with other animals, are subject to the attacks of two parasitic worms. 
The long species of worm does not appear to be particularly injurious: 
so far as I have been able to learn, it attacks principally the young birds. 
It is not an uncommon thing on the Sheffield moors to shoot fine plump 
young Grouse with four or five inches of tapeworm hanging from them. 
The cause of the prevalence of these most injurious parasites is probably 
insufficient or improper food. In early spring (é. e. during the breeding- 
season) Grouse seem to require the young shoots of the heather to keep 
them in a healthy condition. It sometimes happens that these young 
shoots or buds are nipped by a late frost, which turns them brown ; it 
has been frequently observed that upon moors where such has been the 
case Grouse-disease has soon made its appearance. Upon some moors 
this disease has doubtless been caused by the young shoots of the 
heather having been eaten off by sheep, so that there has not been suffi- 
cient left for the Grouse. On other moors the same result has happened 
from an overstocking of the birds themselves. It is obviously of great 
importance to the health of the birds that the moors should neither be 
overstocked with Grouse nor sheep. The preserving of Grouse is a more 
artificial arrangement than it at first sight appears. It is true that we 
thin them pretty effectually during some months of the year after the 
12th of August, when the chance of scarcity of food is over. Nature’s 
Grouse-shooting, on the other hand, begins some months earlier. Before 
the spring food has scarcely made its appearance, she sends her migratory 
Hawks to the moors. Should any disease show itself because the Grouse 
were too numerous for their supply of food, the birds of prey would doubt- 
less soon stamp it out, removing at once cause and effect by destroying the 
sickly birds, which would naturally be the easier prey. Some gamekeepers 
assert that Grouse-disease is an affection of the liver, caused by long-con- 
tinued cold and rainy weather in spring; but the probability is that the 
seat of the disease, where such exists, is rather in the lungs. The year 
1873 was a bad one for Grouse on the Sheffield moors. Towards the end 
of May a great many dead birds were picked up in an emaciated condition. 
Some of these were carefully dissected by Mr. B. Cartledge, a well-known 
veterinary surgeon in the town, who pronounced the cause of death to be 
in all cases chronic inflammation of the lungs. Many of them had the 
VOL, Il. QF 
