398 THE GKOUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



areas of from one-eighth to half an acre), the two keepers and their parties 

 will burn 20 acres a day, or a total of 200 acres of the moor in a year. 



Those who have not had a practical experience of heather-burning are apt 

 to hold exaggerated ideas as to the amount of work that can be done in a 

 single day's burning. It is only when facts and figures are subjected to a 

 careful scrutiny, and the amount both of the day's work and the season's results 

 are thoroughly gone into, that the smallness of the area burned becomes 

 apparent. If we admit this contention to be correct, a little simple arithmetic 

 will show that 200 acres on 6,000 acres of moorland is one-thirtieth of the 

 total area, that is to say that, if the heather is regularly fired in rotation 

 it will be thirty years, or in the case of the 10,000 acre moor fifty years 

 old before it comes to its turn for burning. 



If we consider that every year is not a good burning year, and that on 

 many moors on the west coast a good burning year occurs only once in three 

 years, that some districts suffer from fogs, "haars," and mist; that others get 

 so dried up after a continuance of east wind that it is dangerous to burn at 

 all ; that in Scotland the high ground in a late spring is covered with snow 

 until the end of March ; that there are the additional difficulties of suddenly 

 rising winds, late dews, and of getting men away from their holdings, etc., it 

 will be easily seen that a moor may go for a series of years with only one- 

 sixtieth or one-hundredth part of its total area burned, and that instead of 

 catching up the heather rotation in force when the sheep-farmer was responsible 

 for maintaining it, many moors are steadily going back in their yield of young 

 heather, and therefore in their power of maintaining a healthy stock of Grouse. 



The second difficulty, viz., of persuading the moor -owner that his birds 

 Shortage ma 7 ^ e s ^ ort f food, is not less great. Many proprietors only see 

 of food. their moors in August every head of heather in bloom and green 

 shoots on every stem. He sees sheep grazing at the rate of one to the acre. 

 It is very difficult to persuade him that at certain seasons there may not . 

 be enough food for at least an equal number of Grouse. 



Let it be at once admitted that through the summer and autumn, even on 

 the worst moors, there is abundance of food ; but then at that time, except 

 for a previous infection, Grouse do not die. Let the doubter visit the moor 

 in March, when the heather seed has fallen from the pod, when the young heather 

 up to four and six years old is frosted a clarety red or brown colour, when the 

 old stick heather sparsely distributed and bare of side shoots does not carry a 



