410 THE GROUSE IN HEALTH AND IN DISEASE 



Apart from the question of sport, this argument can be proved to be 

 erroneous in mere pounds, shillings, and pence, for, as has been shown 

 already, moors can be raised from a yield of under three hundred brace 

 per annum to over three thousand, or, expressed in terms of existing 

 values, from 300 a year to not less than 3,000. Even on moors 

 where such great advances cannot be ma,de, the avoidance of a single 

 year of disease would alone save more than three times the expenditure 

 incurred in a decade through the employment of a few extra men for 

 burning. 



(2) The argument that the old keeper frequently puts fonvard that " to 

 strip the moor is sufficient." 



It is not necessary to deal with this point again ; it is sufficient here 

 to point out that keepers have not the least idea of what acreage they 

 burn in a year, and will often say and believe that they burn one-tenth 

 part of the moor when one-hundredth is nearer the mark. 



(3) The argument that the existing method of burning has produced good 



results in the past. 



This must be accepted, but with the reservation that good results 

 in the past have almost invariably been followed by disease in the 

 following year. It is to avoid disease and heighten the average yield 

 of the moor that the progressive landlord will see that it is worth 

 while to limit the food crop for a few years in the attempt to get 

 the moor into good " heart." 



(4) The old-heather argument that it is dangerous to burn the old heather 



as birds will have no food in winter. 

 Three things should be remembered in this connection. 



1st. That on some of the most heavily stocked Grouse moors no old 

 heather exists, yet there is enough winter food. 



2nd. That in time of snow the medium-sized heather can be raked with 

 little labour and thus afford abundant winter food should the bulk 

 of the long heather be buried in snow or destroyed by frost. 



3rd. That long heather is valuable only as long as it gives food Grouse 

 eat heather shoots, not wood. Much of the heather in England 

 and Scotland that has been left for winter food has been steadily 

 going back for twenty years, and it now produces barely one-tenth 

 of its proper food yield. 



