"GROUSE DISEASE" 205 



This view is founded not on actual measurement of weight, but on the 

 bird's general appearance of good feather and normal weight, as estimated by 

 the observer who takes the bird in his hand when it is found dead on the moor. 



In most alleged outbreaks of "Grouse Disease" the birds have been collected 

 and burned, or buried by the score in a soft moss-hag or under a rock. They 

 were never weighed, and never carefully examined. Yet without careful 

 weighing and examination it is impossible to come to any reasonable conclusion 

 as to their condition or the cause of their death. 



The Committee's field-observer has himself been present on several occasions 

 when such birds have been picked up and passed from one to another of 

 the keepers and the ghillies ; full-feathered, richly-coloured hens, perhaps found 

 almost warm but dead upon their nests. And these birds have been weighed 

 in the hands and their weight guessed as fully normal, notwithstanding the 

 condition of the breast, yet the spring balance has invariably proved appearances 

 deceptive, except in the cases where accident has been the cause of death. 



If the case is a hen whose feathers have been recently donned for nesting a 

 most misleading impression of good condition is given even in a wasted bird, 

 where the plumage has not been drenched with rain or bleached by sunshine. 

 In the cocks it is different, for the feathers have not been changed for the nesting 

 season, and the plumage is often worn and faded in comparison with the new, 

 nesting plumage of the hen. 1 



It is often hard to believe that a hen Grouse which has died in full nesting 

 plumage, however thin and poor, is not actually heavier than the dingy cock 

 bird of the same month. And if no rain has fallen on the hen since her death 

 the comparison between her and the cocks which are found in all stages of 

 disease, decayed, weathered and bleached, is even more misleading. 



The point has now been too often tested to allow of doubt. No bird dies 

 of Strongylosis without loss of weight. That some birds waste more and some 

 less before succumbing to the disease is certainly true, the difference in this 

 respect depends mainly upon the season ; yet it must be conceded that sex 

 and individual strength also make a difference. 2 



On one point the Committee can speak with entire confidence. During the 

 whole period of the Inquiry, from 1904 to 1910, there has not been a single 

 outbreak of "Grouse Disease" in which the birds died without loss of weight. 



1 Vide chap. iii. 



2 Vide chap. vi. p. 142. 



