THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 43 



ments of each hursel of sheep, while respecting the 

 rights and interests of the prince of game birds. 

 Shepherds, however good and reasonable they may 

 be in other respects, like to delay the burning of 

 heather until the latest legal date. They have their 

 reasons for their choice. They do not care to fire the 

 heather until it is very dry, for this reason, that if the 

 stems of the heather are green they will not burn well, 

 but will become hard and sharp, and the sheep will 

 not willingly feed among it. The drawback to post- 

 poning the burning of the heather is the fact that the 

 grouse is an early breeder, and that late fires are likely 

 to disturb breeding birds, and to drive them away 

 from their nests. So the first point in keeping up 

 a good supply of grouse is to secure a clever and 

 thoughtful management of the heather. 



The next point is to supplement a good supply of 

 food for the grouse by waging war against its four- 

 footed and winged persecutors. The modern game 

 preserver has often a genuine sympathy for the wild 

 creatures that are roughly classed together as 'vermin.' 

 It would be a grievous sin, undoubtedly, to extirpate 

 even ' vermin 'altogether. People who have no game 

 of their own to preserve are sometimes templed to say 

 hard things of those who have, because they kill out 

 hawks and other high-spirited creatures. Neverthe- 



