Page:Grouse Disease.djvu/16

2 farms, very little would be heard of grouse disease. The marvel is that it is not more prevalent considering how many of the grouse ranges are mismanaged by allowing the growth of unwholesome food for the birds and upsetting the organization of nature, instead of being guided by her unerring laws. The penalty of such folly is, as a matter of course, grouse disease.

We took a great deal of trouble to get trustworthy information as to the prospects of the moors for 1882, and we published the result in the Press in July. Since then the tidings as to the crop of grouse have fully confirmed our predictions; and the gloomy forebodings of some discontented persons have been proved to have been greatly exaggerated. Spread over so large an area of the British Islands as the red grouse is, the reports naturally vary considerably. The accounts received by us, together with the consignments of birds to the South, and the Press reports, testify that on the high grounds sport has been fairly good, whilst on the low-lying moors grouse were not only plentiful but in excellent condition, with few exceptions,—all, in short, that the most cynical gunner could have desired. On some of the very high lands the birds were not altogether free from disease, which was more prevalent in Ayrshire, Perthshire, Invernessshire, and Caithness. On the English and Welsh moors sport has been much above the average, and