364 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



300 patches of from one-fourth of an acre to one acre, making, 

 say, 150 acres, two hundred patches of from one-fourth to one- 

 tenth of an acre, say 50 acres, i.e., about 500 burns with a total 

 of between 250 and 300 acres. 



Taking the average as four parties burning a day, for it 

 must be borne in mind that on very dry or windy days the 

 keepers will often have to use the whole of their posse as one 

 burning party, it will require about ten days or twenty half 

 days to get through the work, calculating that each party burns 

 an average of fourteen patches a day. 



This is a fair statement of what ought to be done on a 4,000- 

 acre moor ; it probably exceeds by a very considerable amount 

 what is done on many moors of double that size. 



If the number of men for the burning parties cannot be got 

 the area of the fires must be bigger ; but the ratio of heather 

 burned to total area of the moor must be maintained at all costs. 

 In considering the general question of heather burning, 

 undue weight must not be attached to arguments such as the 

 following : 



(1) That the expense is too great. 



Apart from the question of sport, this argument can 

 be proved to be erroneous in mere pounds, shillings, and 

 pence, for, as has been shown already, some moors 

 can be raised from a yield of under three hundred 

 brace per annum to over three thousand, or, expressed 

 in terms of existing values, from 300 a year to not 

 less than 3,000. Even on moors where such great 

 advances cannot be made, the avoidance of a single 

 year of disease would alone save more than three 

 times the expenditure incurred in a decade through 

 the employment of a few extra men for burning. 

 (2) The argument that the old keeper frequently puts forward 



that " to strip the moor is sufficient." 

 It is not necessary to deal with this point again ; 

 it is sufficient here to point out that keepers have 

 not the least idea of what acreage they burn in a year, 



