{721}
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
SCOTTISH DEER-FORESTS.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
HOME-NURSING.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
ARTIFICIAL JEWELS.
THE MISSING CLUE.
THE RING-TRICK.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
A HAWTHORN STORY.
No. 46.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1884.
SCOTTISH DEER-FORESTS.
Deer-stalking has for many a long year beenlooked upon as the king of sports; and inScotland, a large area of land has from an earlyperiod been occupied by the red-deer and theroebuck. At the present time, as far as hasbeen ascertained by a recent inquiry under RoyalCommission, the extent of all the deer-forestsin Scotland amounts to about two millions ofacres. It is only, however, right to say thatthe land devoted to these animals could not bemore profitably employed. It has been affirmedby practical men that it is scarcely possible tofeed even one hardy black-faced sheep on lessthan six acres of such land, so scant is theherbage. Indeed, some intelligent farmers maintainthat it will take a hundred and sixty acresof forest-land to graze a score of these sheep.No person who is even tolerably familiar withthe deer-districts of Scotland will gainsay this.The contour, altitude, and climate of a deer-forestquite unfit it for agricultural purposes—the rangeof ground occupied by these stately animals isof the most miscellaneous description: hill anddale, moor and morass, mountain and glen, withevery here and there rocky precipices, and smallgroups of trees naturally planted, and chieflyof the hardy native birch. In the three chiefdeer-counties of Scotland, the cultivable area issingularly small in proportion to their totalextent. Taking Argyll, Inverness, and Ross-shireas examples, only three hundred andeighty-seven thousand five hundred and ninety-eightacres are to be found under cultivation,out of an area which covers six million eighthundred and twenty-three thousand and twoacres, leaving nearly six and a half millions ofacres to be inhabited by sheep, deer, and grouse,and as the site of lochs, rivers, and mountains,and sterile places on which nothing grows andnothing can live.
No authentic statistics are collected in Scotlandof the deer which are annually slain in the wayof sport; but we are enabled from records whichappear from time to time in the public prints,to estimate the number