374 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



but this year it is over-running the moor and doing great damage. 

 The insect made its appearance in beetle form in May, and its 

 grubs about three weeks or a month ago, and is now to be found 

 in hundreds on every bit of ' rusty ' and ' so-called frosted ' 

 heather. The grub appears to appreciate [? prefer] young to 

 old heather." 



(c) " From what I saw . . . about six weeks ago, I have 

 no doubt you are correct as to ' frosted ' heather. There are 

 great areas and many patches of this brown, withered heather 

 on the moor, and there was a whole colony of the larvae at the 

 roots of every such patch we looked at." 



(d) " My keeper has had two days on the moor, searching 

 for the larvse or pupae of the heather beetle, and he can find none. 

 ... I am sorry the search was not successful ; but the informa- 

 tion that the larvae disappears between September 5th and 

 November 5th amounts to something." 



(e) " On the . . . moors there were, in places, many patches 

 of the so-called frosted heather heather which had grown well 

 up to a certain point, perhaps four to six years, and then without 

 apparent rhyme or reason lost its sap and turned brown and 

 withered before the flowering season. It looked very much 

 like what heather might be expected to appear after a severe 

 and late frost in May, but it was quite evident that atmospheric 

 conditions (wind or temperature) had nothing to do with the 

 result, as the ' frosted ' patch ended quite suddenly and was 

 abruptly framed in perfectly sound healthy heather, which must 

 have been exposed to exactly the same external conditions as the 

 ' frosted ' heather. The keeper and I had many discussions over 

 the cause of the spoilt heather, and we only agreed on one point, 

 namely, that frost had nothing to do with the disease. I suggested 

 a vegetable parasite, and he had views on improper burning, 

 and there we left the matter (both of us being wide of the mark 

 as it turned out). On ... at the time I am speaking of, 

 there was a very considerable quantity of the 4 frosted ' heather ; 

 I couldn't, even very roughly, give the acreage, but over the 

 whole ground it must have mounted up to a big total, probably 



