350 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



of burning is followed (i.e., burning in areas of from one- 

 eighth to half an acre), the two keepers and their parties 

 will burn 20 acres a day, or a total of 200 acres of the moor 

 in a year. 



Those who have not had a practical experience of heather- 

 burning are apt to hold exaggerated ideas as to the amount 

 of work that can be done in a single day's burning. It is only 

 when facts and figures are subjected to a careful scrutiny, 

 and the amount both of the day's work and the season's results 

 are thoroughly gone into, that the smallness of the area burned 

 becomes apparent. If we admit this contention to be correct, 

 a little simple arithmetic will show that 200 acres on 6,000 acres 

 of moorland is one-thirtieth of the total area, that is to say that, 

 if the heather is regularly fired in rotation it will be thirty years, 

 or in the case of the 10,000 acre moor fifty years old before it 

 comes to its turn for burning. 



If we consider that every year is not a good burning year, 

 and that on many moors on the west coast a good burning year 

 occurs only once in three years, that some districts suffer from 

 fogs, " haars," and mist ; that others get so dried up after a 

 continuance of east wind that it is dangerous to burn at all ; 

 that in Scotland the high ground in a late spring is covered with 

 snow until the end of March ; that there are the additional 

 difficulties of suddenly rising winds, late dews, and of getting 

 men away from their holdings, etc., it will be easily seen that a 

 moor may go for a series of years with only one-sixtieth or one- 

 hundredth part of its total area burned, and that instead of 

 catching up the heather rotation in force when the sheep -farmer 

 was responsible for maintaining it, many moors are steadily 

 going back in their yield of young heather, and therefore in 

 their power of maintaining a healthy stock of Grouse. 



The second difficulty, viz., of persuading the moor-owner 

 that his birds may be short of food, is not less great. Many 

 proprietors only see their moors in August every head of 

 heather in bloom and green shoots on every stem. He sees 

 sheep grazing at the rate of one to the acre. It is very difficult 



