REMARKS ON THE GROUSE DISEASE. 403 



they so often do in this country, a much larger area of good 

 feeding-ground is damaged. If there were less young heather 

 there would be fewer birds, I believe ; but should late frosts 

 come they would be less likely to do damage on a large 

 scale. If we must have birds at the rate of fifty or a hundred 

 to the acre on our moors (I do not speak from statistics), we 

 must burn our heather judiciously and well ; but if we have 

 this unnatural stock one year, we must not be surprised if the 

 following spring a severe late frost damages, or destroys, all our 

 fine stretches of tender young heather, and our Grouse con- 

 sequently become diseased. Formerly, I believe, when heather- 

 burning was not so common, the young heather came up to a 

 limited and natural extent beneath the old heather, which latter, 

 to some considerable extent, protected the former from the frosts 

 of spring. Now the young heather is forced up by the burn- 

 ing, and it has no protection at all, as formerly. Much more 

 might be said in support of what I have already stated, but to 

 me so self-evident seem the causes, and the whole sequence of the 

 facts connected with the Grouse disease, and so certain am I 

 that in the main issues I shall be supported in what I say by those 

 naturalists whose opinion is most worth having, that I do not 

 think it necessary here to bring forward further proofs and 

 statistics ; but simply to repeat that the first causes of Grouse 

 disease are to be found in over- stocking, over-preservation, 

 ignorant and reckless slaughter of so-called vermin, greed, un- 

 natural and too rapid burning of heather, and a wholly artificial 

 state of Grouse -farming. 



In different districts these causes may vary to some extent. 

 In the west, for instance, if too large areas of heather are 

 destroyed (i.e., burned), where young heather takes three or four 

 years to reappear, or is entirely supplanted by ling and grasses, 

 and where the hill-sides get "pitted" and worn into cup-shaped 

 holes by the naturally wet climate and great rainfall, holding thus 

 much moisture, then Grouse do not increase in numbers, but 

 become extinct or scarce, owing to the scarcity of natural food 

 and then perhaps the outcry is made, not against the interference 

 with Nature's laws in this direction, but against the super- 

 abundance of " vermin." 



Again, in Perthshire or Banffshire, or other districts where 

 young heather rushes up as if in a hot-bed after the old heather 



