HEATHER-BURNING 361 



Having laid down the object of heather - burning, the Practical 

 methods of treatment of different types of ground and certain 

 laws applicable to all moors, it only remains to discuss the 

 practical steps the owner of a badly burned moor must take 

 to get his heather-land into " good heart " with the least 

 possible delay. We will presume that the moor under con- 

 sideration is one of those many moors in England or Scotland 

 which has possibilities, but which has been neglected ; a moor 

 which has its high ground difficult to burn, its boggy undrained 

 land, and its stretches of stick heather with a tendency to revert 

 to grass ; that, moreover, it is a moor which has disease at 

 irregular intervals as well as average and bumper years ; and 

 that, like all moors that form part of a tract of Grouse ground, 

 it is liable to be over-stocked at the critical period of late winter 

 and early spring. 



The first thing that the owner of a moor of this sort must 

 do is to decide what rotation of heather crop is to be aimed at, 

 i.e., what is the total area of moorland available, and how many 

 acres of it are to be burned every year. 



The period of rotation requires very careful consideration, 

 and depends on the average age of the heather, the sporting 

 results the moor-owner wishes to obtain during the period of 

 transition from bad conditions to good, and the local difficulties 

 labour, climate, etc. From what has been stated on the results 

 of burning stick heather, it is evident that if really old heather 

 bulks largely in the total area it is impracticable to jump at 

 once into a fifteen years' rotation and maintain any stock of 

 Grouse. A little calculation will show that in the extreme 

 case of a moor on which all the heather has reached the " keeper's 

 delight " stage, and therefore requires six to twenty years to 

 come again, to burn the whole moor in fifteen years would leave 

 not only no spring feed, but scarcely any edible heather at all. 



In treating a really badly burned moor, therefore, unless it is 

 determined to sacrifice several years of sport by setting all the 

 old heather ablaze, less heroic methods should be adopted, and 

 the ground should be got gradually into a shortened period of 



