70 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



statistics, showing the results of their depredations on 

 moorland game, may perhaps be appropriate. The ground 

 vermin fox, stoat, and weasel are by far the most destruc- 

 tive, and their reduction by trapping is essential to keeping 

 up a fair head of game. The hill-fox, which has cubs at the 

 time when the Grouse are sitting, is the most deadly enemy 

 to them, taking the hen birds off their eggs ; but the stoat 

 and weasel, being far more numerous, are perhaps almost 

 equally destructive in the aggregate. If these three pests 

 (I refer, of course, to non-hunting districts), and the Corbies, 

 or Carrion Crows, are kept down, probably a few Peregrines 

 would not do a very perceptible amount of damage, and tlie 

 small Hawks even less. The following figures, showing the 

 quantity of game killed on the same ground during two 

 equal periods (1) without trapping at all, and (2) with 

 regular trapping all the year round are sufficiently eloquent 

 on the subject : 



The grouse-disease is unquestionably the price we have to 

 pay for maintaining the stock of moor game at a much higher 

 level than Nature ever intended ; but, on the whole, we are 

 no doubt very greatly the gainers. For one season of bad 

 disease, we have perhaps five or six of an artificial or extra- 

 natural abundance. 



In corroboration of the above deductions, it may be 

 interesting, in winding up these rambling notes on a bird 

 which possesses such importance to sportsmen, to mention 

 that in Norway, where the closely allied Willow-Grouse 

 (Layopus subalpina) is extremely abundant, grouse-disease 

 is practically unknown. The Norwegian species is no- 



