352 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



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 afford 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 

 remembered that they require probably twice or three times 

 as much 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 late winter and early spring 

 up to two hundred and fifty grains of heather are found in the 

 average afternoon crop as against fifty grains at any other time 

 of the year. It is therefore reasonable to say that as the Grouse 

 have to increase the amount of their food they will naturally 

 go to those places where edible Calluna is most readily obtained, 

 and thus by congestion of the stock on a small area will not only 

 over-crop the food there, but also, as will be shown later, will 

 be exposed to an increase of infection by the nematode worm 

 and by the Coccidium. 



Before leaving the question of the comparison of feeding 

 areas of well and badly burned moors, one further point should 

 be mentioned. On a well-managed moor the heather burned 

 is all under twenty years old, and when it is burned the young 

 heather springs from the root the same year. On a badly- 

 burned moor, where old stick heather forms the main crop, 

 the heather springs from seed, 1 and in many cases only affords 



1 Vide Plate xx., fig. 2. 



