82 THE GROUSE 



maintenance of grouse is the common 

 ling (Calluna vulgaris), which luxuriates 

 on all moorish unreclaimed lands, but 

 is perhaps most at home on peaty 

 tracts overlying sand, and well open to 

 sunshine. 



In Scotland the heather flower is 

 regarded with almost national affection, 

 surrounded as it is with poetic sentiment 

 and romantic story. Truly, nothing in 

 nature is more lovely or more entrancing 

 to the senses than a great stretch of 

 heath in full bloom, giving forth its 

 delightful fragrance in the pure mountain 

 air. But we cannot dwell on this. Our 

 task is the more prosaic one of describing 

 the value of heather to the shooter of 

 grouse, the best means of producing it in 

 perfection, and of conserving it in health 

 and vigour for the breeding and sustenance 

 of grouse. 



There are evidences nearly five centuries 

 old of heather having had some economic 

 value as an article of fuel. It was also, of 

 course, from an immemorial age of some 



