RED GROUSE 233 



Since that year the season's bags have not been published, 

 and it is believed that they fell off very much until 1905, when 

 there was a good recovery, but not a record, and disappointment 

 occurred again in 1906. 



From these figures we are not able to gather that driving 

 and no dog work has acted as a means of preservation and an 

 increase of the stock, but that it has enabled the grouse to be 

 killed when they were there, as they undoubtedly were in 1 879, 

 when the driving was so little understood that it did not 

 materially assist the bags for the season, as may be gathered 

 from the bag for the day quoted above. Nothing can be 

 gathered from these bags to suggest that anything like a remedy 

 for the stagnation spoken of has been discovered, and we hope 

 in vain, year by year, to see that advance of from 400 to 800 

 per cent, spoken of by Lord Walsingham, eighteen years ago, in 

 regard to Yorkshire. 



It has been already pointed out that by draining a moor one 

 may often add a third to its heather-bearing land, and also that 

 by removing a sheep to the acre one conserves about ten times 

 the heather food a grouse eats. Yet neither of these methods 

 has made very much difference anywhere. Both have done 

 something to add to the stock in places, and both have also 

 been disappointing in other places. Surely there must be some 

 reason that has not only never been discovered, but has not 

 even been looked for. It has been shown that were it only a 

 question of heather food, the removal of sheep, where they are 

 one to an acre, would multiply the grouse capacity of the moors 

 by ten times, and the author believes that the majority of moors 

 have on them, even when they carry sheep, ten times the 

 heather the grouse require. If the former, to say nothing of 

 the latter, is approximately true, then there must be something 

 besides heather the grouse require, and the absence of which, in 

 quantities, prevents their increase beyond two to an acre even 

 on the most favourable moors. 



There is no doubt from the above facts that there is some 

 such want, but what it is the author can only speculate upon. 

 It appears likely that what is wanted by all young grouse, as by 



