EED GROUSE. 433 



and are frequently picked up dead. The cause of this disease has given 

 rise to much controversy. The hirds which have died of it are frequently 

 found, when dissected, to be infested with a small parasitic worm in 

 the intestines. Some sportsmen maintain that these parasites are the 

 cause of the weakness and subsequent death of the Grouse ; others, on the 

 other handj assert that the abundance of parasitic worms is only a symptom 

 of, and caused by, the diseased state of the bird. Grouse, in common 

 with other animals, are subject to the attacks of two parasitic worms. 

 The long species of worm does not appear to be particularly injurious : 

 so far as I have been able to learn, it attacks principally the young birds. 

 It is not an uncommon thing on the Sheffield moors to shoot fine plump 

 young Grouse with four or five inches of tapeworm hanging from them. 

 The cause of the prevalence of these most injurious parasites is probably 

 insufficient or improper food. In early spring {i. e. during the breeding- 

 season) Grouse seem to require the young shoots of the heather to keep 

 them in a healthy condition. It sometimes happens that these young 

 shoots or buds are nipped by a late frost, which turns them brown ; it 

 has been frequently observed that upon moors where such has been the 

 case Grouse-disease has soon made its appearance. Upon some moors 

 this disease has doubtless been caused by the young shoots of the 

 heather having been eaten off by sheep, so that there has not been suffi- 

 cient left for the Grouse. On other moors the same result has happened 

 from an overstocking of the birds themselves. It is obviously of great 

 importance to the health of the birds that the moors should neither be 

 overstocked with Grouse nor sheep. The preserving of Grouse is a more 

 artificial arrangement than it at first sight appears. It is true that we 

 thin them pretty efi'ectually during some months of the year after the 

 12th of August, when the chance of scarcity of food is over. Nature's 

 Grouse- shooting, on the other hand, begins some months earlier. Before 

 the spring food has scarcely made its appearance, she sends her migratory 

 Hawks to the moors. Should any disease show itself because the Grouse 

 were too numerous for their supply of food, the birds of prey would doubt- 

 less soon stamp it out, removing at once cause and effect by destroying the 

 sickly birds, which would naturally be the easier prey. Some gamekeepers 

 assert that Grouse-disease is an affection of the liver, caused by long-con- 

 tinued cold and rainy weather in spring ; but the probability is that the 

 seat of the disease, where such exists, is rather in the lungs. The year 

 1873 was a bad one for Grouse on the Sheffield moors. Towards the end 

 of May a great many dead birds were picked up in an emaciated condition. 

 Some of these were carefully dissected by Mr. B. Cartledge, a well-known 

 veterinary surgeon in the town, who pronounced the cause of death to be 

 in all cases chronic infiammation of the lungs. Many of them had the 



VOL. II. 3 F 



