GRIT 97 



makes it necessary for him to confine himself to the hardest and most angular 

 descriptions of rock, and even when quartz grits are found in the gizzard the 

 angles are often rounded and smooth from the nature of the work which they 

 have been called on to perform. Flint grit may serve for Pheasants, but it 

 does not fracture into serviceable shapes for Grouse. Sharp points and cutting 

 edges are not wanted, but sub-angular and roughly rounded pebbles of small 

 size for the breaking up and pulping of the comparatively hard foliage of Calluna. 



In another part of this Report it is suggested that when quartz is scarce 

 it might be artificially introduced with a view to the welfare of the stock. 

 This expedient has met with some success, but has not been very 

 extensively adopted. The artificial introduction of quartz grit has 

 frequently been tried with Pheasants, and always with success. In the grit- 

 Committee's collection there are several specimens of gizzards from Pheasants shot 

 on estates both before and after the introduction of quartz, and in every instance 

 it can be seen that the quartz is preferred to the natural grit found on the estate. 



Observations have been made with a view to finding out how long quartz 

 or other hard grits normally remain in the gizzard of a Grouse, and it has 

 now been proved by experiment that if none are supplied to make 

 good the normal and presumably accidental loss, the bird whose dunng 

 gizzard may on the first day have allowed about a hundred grits to grits 

 pass, becomes exceedingly careful on the second and third day, and in the 



gizzard. 



allows no such loss to occur again. In a case m which no grits were 

 supplied to a Grouse at all, and in which the grits passed in the droppings 

 were carefully washed out and collected every day for twenty-one days, the 

 greatest daily loss after the second day never exceeded thirteen small pieces, 

 even though a hundred and sixty pieces had been passed on the first day, 

 and twenty-seven pieces on the second. This bird died unexpectedly on 

 the twenty-first day, and upon dissection the gizzard was found to 



Control 



contain still no less than half of the original contents, all of which over waste 



of grits. 



had been in the gizzard for at least three weeks. That this apparent 

 control of the gizzard over the loss of grits was not merely accidental was 

 proved by the occurrence of a precisely similar series of losses day by day 

 in another bird ; but when its companion died, apparently as the result of 

 losing half its grits, the second bird was not pressed to a similar finish. 1 

 It is therefore probable that in the ordinary course of a Grouse's life the 



1 For detailed description of experiments in Grit Starvation, see vol. ii. Appendix F., part (1). 

 VOL. I. G 



