{529}
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
GROUSE.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
SANITARY INSPECTION OF THE PORT OF LONDON.
VERMUDYN’S FATE.
IS THE SEASHORE FREE TO ALL?
A NAMELESS ROMANCE.
QUARANTINE.
ON THE COAST.
No. 34.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1884.
GROUSE.
Exact statistics cannot be obtained of the numberof grouse annually killed upon the Moors; butestimates of a reliable kind have occasionallybeen published, from which we learn, that asmany as five hundred thousand annually reachthe markets, in addition to the numbers givenaway as presents or ‘consumed on the premises.’That this figure, large as it may appear to thosewho are not well versed in sporting matters, isnot exaggerated, will be apparent when wemention on good authority, that on some daysof August as many as sixteen thousand grouse(single birds) have been received by the Londonwholesale dealers; and that for days in succession,supplies of from two to ten thousand birdsreach the metropolis to be sold to the retailers.But no matter how great may be the slaughteron the grouse-moors in any given year, thedeath-roll of the following season is frequentlyeven greater. The grouse, in common with manyother birds, protected or otherwise, is endowedwith great powers of reproduction; and evenwhen disease has on some occasions played suchhavoc with the birds, that on some vast stretchesof heather only half-a-dozen brace may have beenleft to multiply and replenish, yet, in two orthree seasons they will have increased with suchrapidity as to be more numerous on that groundthan they ever were before. Stories of nestsbeing seen with as many as fifteen, sixteen, andeighteen eggs have often gone the round of thenewspapers; but the usual number of eggsannually laid by each female may be fixed atnot less than from seven to nine.
But the chief question is not so much thenumber of eggs produced, as the number ofbirds which are hatched and the percentage ofthese that become food for powder. The grousehas a hundred enemies lying in wait to do mischief—todestroy the nests, suck the eggs, or killthe tender brood; nor are the parents spared,when the enemy is their superior in strengthand cunning. Let all who have the chance walkthe heather in June and July with an observanteye, and note the damage which has been doneduring the breeding season by foes, both quadrupedand biped. See yonder