RED GROUSE. 233 



the excessive rents now derived from such properties, have induced 

 both land-owners and lessees to clear the ground of all kinds of 

 animals that would naturally prey upon those birds which are not 

 strong enough to protect themselves; hence, sickly broods of 

 grouse perpetuate other broods that year by year degenerate until 

 disease ensues, and in some instances almost depopulates an 

 entire district. There can be no doubt that this unwarrant- 

 able destruction of hawks and buzzards affects adversely the 

 condition of the birds with which our Scottish mountains are 

 stocked the number of wounded birds alone which survive 

 the unprecedented annual slaughter, through which the Eed 

 Grouse is now obliged to pass, being an argument sufficient to 

 shew that such merciful agents are wanted to prevent the spread 

 of enfeebled life. It is a somewhat significant fact that even 

 healthy-looking grouse, or at least birds shewing no outward 

 signs of disease, are much infested with tapeworms a condition 

 which is not local, but wide spread, as I have proved by examining 

 specimens from moors remote from each other. Professor J. 

 Young, M.D., of Glasgow University, having made similar obser- 

 vations, informs me that he believes the so-called grouse disease 

 does not in any way depend on the presence of these Entozoa, but 

 that the mortality which has of late years caused so much alarm 

 among sportsmen, is in fact due to malnutrition, " to a cachectic 

 state transmitted from parent to offspring, and predisposing the 

 young to suffer from influences such as severity of seasons or 

 temporary scarcity of food, which, under other circumstances, they 

 would have resisted successfully."* In other sections of the animal 

 kingdom epidemics similar to that affecting grouse have been 

 noticed, and so far as my own observations have enabled me to 

 judge, I am disposed to regard these periodical outbreaks of 

 disease as more or less associated with a derangement of Nature's 

 laws. In almost every case where undue protection is given to 

 certain animals by the rigorous destruction of others, man's inter- 

 ference is followed sooner or later by evils of a graver nature than 

 those which the protective measures were intended to cure ; and 

 until some more rational plan is tried for the restoration of the 

 Red Grouse to its original vigour, no one can say what may be the 



* See Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Glasgow, Vol. I., Part 

 I., p. 225 (1868), which contains a short abstract of a paper by Dr Young, on 

 "Certain Aspects of the Grouse Disease." 



