heather is good, and the supply sufficient, the stock will be well nourished and healthy, even on a moor where there are no berries or other miscellaneous kinds of food.
Heather then is the essential basis on which the Grouse depends, and the importance of the plant is so great that it may be permitted to give a short description of the phases through which it passes during the seasons of the year.
Beginning with the months of early spring, it will be seen from Table III. that in April the Grouse's diet consists of an equal quantity of fresh green heather and of brown "winter" heather. The former is more nutritious than Winter
heather. the latter, but even the brown winter heather is better than nothing, and is to be distinguished from withered dead heather which Grouse never eat.
The fresh green heather so desirable for the food of Grouse does not necessarily represent the young shoots of the spring growth, for these do not generally appear till May, but rather the evergreen foliage which the plant carries upon its lower branches throughout the winter. No one who casually examines a Grouse-moor in midwinter can realise that the dull brown weather-beaten scrub conceals on its more sheltered twigs a luxuriant growth of vivid green shoots: these green shoots are far more Shoot
versus long
heather. numerous on short close heather than on the long overgrown heather so common on many moors, for as the plant increases in height it becomes more open in its growth and more susceptible to the blighting effects of frost and cold winds.
In cases where the heather has attained a height of several feet the shelter is so greatly reduced that it is sometimes difficult to find any green shoots at all in winter unless the weather has been unusually mild; such long overgrown heather is of practically no value as winter food for Grouse (see Pl. xxiii., Fig. 1). This type of long and apparently luxuriant heather is very common on the west coast of Scotland, and in many districts in the central Highlands, and probably accounts for the fact that these districts carry a comparatively small stock of Grouse. In other districts the heather seems to have developed a short, close habit of growth — to the uninitiated it would appear to be stunted and poor; yet it is in the districts where Dwarf
type of
heather. this dwarf type of heather is common that Grouse appear to thrive in the largest numbers. The hills are covered with a close carpet of vegetation having a smooth level surface which may be compared to a well-clipped yew hedge — this level surface forms a canopy of shelter from frost,
