190 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



It was clear that Dr Cobbold's experience had lain entirely with emaciated 

 birds, while Professor Klein as we know observed birds of all kinds ; but 

 always from moors where the pneumonic disease appeared to be rampant. 



It had been generally noticed in past epidemics of disease that the first 

 Character victims were of the emaciated type. It was only in the later stages 



of past epi- 

 demics. o f the outbreak that birds in apparently robust health were said to 



have been found dead often " sitting on their nests." 



The Committee believed it not unlikely, judging only from the limited 

 evidence before them, that the reason of this was that the acute pneumonic 

 disease picked out first and made a clean sweep of birds already emaciated 

 by Cobbold's Strongylosis. These piners would naturally be concentrated on 

 the lower ground, and since their power of resistance to disease would be low 

 any infection would naturally spread rapidly amongst them, while the more 

 healthy birds on the higher beats, with a greater disease-resisting power in 

 them, would be less prone to take the infection immediately, and also would 

 be less readily discovered on the higher ground, even when the disease had 

 proved fatal. 



This hypothesis appeared to account for a clean sweep of the piners all 

 Might be over the moor, and for the distribution of their bodies in large 

 forby'both numbers along the burn-sides, before the disease could reach the 

 Cobbold's 6 healthy Grouse on the upper ground, or at least before the dead 

 theories. bodies of Grouse on the high ground were discovered in any 

 number. 



There appeared therefore in the early days of the Inquiry to be some 

 reason for suspecting that both Klein and Cobbold had confused two separate 

 diseases under the common title " Grouse Disease." 



And with regard to this point the Committee were probably in a better 

 position to judge than those who had preceded them, in that the latter had 

 begun and ended their work amongst innumerable dead and dying Grouse, 

 the victims of a chronic wasting form of disease, often, it seemed, inseparably 

 mixed up with the victims of a widespread epidemic of acute pneumonia. 



One thing was quite certain, that whereas the Committee had seen during 



Only one the first three years of the Inquiry extensive mortality amongst Grouse 



dis&ase caused by some agent which acted slowly and produced " piners " 



by S Com- on ly> they had not seen anything at all like an epidemic of acute 



or infectious pneumonia. It followed therefore that if the rapid 



