APPENDIX G 131 



in the hot, dry summer of 1908 there was a loss of Grouse chicks from 

 some unknown cause. 



(8) The foregoing Reports have established a clear connection between a good heather 

 year and a healthy stock the following spring. 



It may be thought that the foregoing observations are of little practical value to 

 moor-owners and sportsmen, since they only go to prove that the welfare of the 

 Grouse is in the hands of Providence, and that there is nothing that man can do to 

 improve the spring growth of heather or moderate the rainfall of May ; but apart altogether 

 from the general necessity of knowing the natural conditions which affect the bird, it 

 is believed that the ascertainment of the foregoing facts may be of some real practical 

 value to game preservers. 



It has already been pointed out that the condition of the heather may be a useful 

 guide as to the manner in which the stock should be regulated in accordance with the 

 probable food supply available for wintering; but it is also hoped that by proving 

 the supreme importance of good winter food on the health of the bird, owners and 

 their servants may be encouraged to give more attention to the question of heather 

 culture. It is true that in a poor heather year the heather on a well- burned moor will 

 suffer equally in proportion with that on a badly-burned moor, but the total area of winter 

 feeding on the former is so much greater than on the latter, that the well-burned moor 

 can better stand the strain of a lean harvest, and its stock will manage to struggle 

 through the winter without serious loss ; while on less well managed ground the mortality 

 may be very heavy. Heather culture is better understood and more extensively practised 

 in England than it is in Scotland, and to this is probably due the fact that the health 

 of the Grouse in that country does not appear to have been so seriously affected by 

 the bad heather crop of 1907 as it was in Scotland whenever the heather crop failed. 

 On those moors in Scotland, where heather burning has been carried out on proper 

 lines, it is found that the stock is not so hard hit after a bad heather year, and always 

 makes a more rapid recovery than when the heather has been neglected. 



