66 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



of less luxuriant growth, and alternates with stretches of 

 white grass, rushes, and bracken. Moorlands of this 

 character, though eminently suitable for blackgame of 

 which they are, par excellence, the stronghold are inferior 

 in grouse-producing power ; where both species of game are 

 found together, the power of man to increase abnormally the 

 head of grouse is limited. It is not till the Scottish High- 

 lands are reached that we find repeated on the solid heather 

 of Perth and Aberdeen the phenomenal fecundity of 

 Wemmergill and Blubberhouses. 



To resume : man, beyond doubt, is the primary cause of 

 grouse-disease in his tampering with Nature's balance of 

 life, and with the natural conditions on the moorlands. 

 Nature designed various checks upon the undue fecundity of 

 the Tetraonidce. She formed the Peregrine, the Harrier, and 

 the Merlins specially to hunt the moors. Man determined 

 to have all the hunting himself, and has removed Nature's 

 safeguards. Doubtless a century or two ago all the above- 

 named birds of prey abounded on the heathery uplands, and 

 day by day examined every acre of fell and flowe, picking out 

 both the superabundance of healthy birds, and the sickly if 

 ever the symptoms of disease appeared. Thus the disease 

 was practically unknown till some time after the commence- 

 ment of the present century. 



But now we have changed all that. Game preservation 

 and vermin trapping have created a new order of things. 

 The Harrier and Falcon have gone ; the hill-fox and weasel 

 are held in check. Thus the stock of Grouse is vastly in- 

 creased, and is maintained ever close along the margin of 

 the dividing line beyond which Nature has decreed it shall 

 not go. When that line is passed, she re-asserts her su- 

 premacy, repels our interference, and disease sweeps bare 

 the heath-clad hills. 



The extent to which the system of heather- burning is now 

 carried, is unquestionably another factor in the promotion of 

 disease. In the fierce competition of the age, the heather, 

 like the grouse, is, so to speak, " forced " ; an unnatural 

 quantity is demanded from the hills, and an artificial state 

 of affairs created, both as regards the crop of heather and of 



