20 TRANSACTION'S OF ROVAI. SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETW 



loss is likely to be caused by the enclosure and planting on the 

 relatively small area which may be found suitable. 



" With regard to deer forests, it may be said that a good deal 

 of the land which they contain is too high for profitable 

 planting: even taking 1500 feet as the upper limit for 

 planting — and in many cases of new plantations 1500 feet 

 would be too high a limit — some deer forests would show very 

 little plantable land as compared to their area. But there are 

 deer forests, especially towards the west coast, which have a 

 relatively large area of plantable land. Here again, as in 

 sheep farms, the question of wintering will arise. Deer forests 

 before the war made a very considerable contribution to the 

 rates in several Highland counties. If the rents of deer forests 

 are to be maintained, it is obvious that no very drastic alteration 

 in the present conditions can be made. The large stocks of 

 deer in Scottish forests make it quite impossible to plant 

 successfully without fencing the deer off the planted ground^ 

 and if the whole of the wintering ground were to be enclosed 

 at any one time, the sporting value of the remainder of the 

 ground would be greatly reduced. Probably one third of the 

 wintering ground is as much as could be enclosed against deer 

 at any one time. The shelter provided by woods would 

 eventually become of great advantage to the deer, but in the 

 numbers in which they exist at present they could not be 

 admitted safely to young plantations under twenty-five to 

 thirty years old. 



" Perhaps the solution of the question may lie in the direction 

 of a greatly reduced stock of deer, which, living under better 

 conditions, would produce heavier stags and better heads than 

 are found in Scotland at the present day. But the whole 

 conditions would be changed : the shooting tenant would have 

 to be content with fifteen or twenty stags, where he now kills 

 one hundred to a hundred and twenty, and it remains to be 

 seen whether under the altered conditions it would be possible 

 to obtain tenants at anything like the present rents. Without 

 a survey it is no use attempting an estimate of the amount 

 of land which could be planted eventually in the deer forests. 

 If the whole of the wintering ground were to be afforested, 

 then an interval of at least twenty-five years would have to 

 elapse between the undertaking of each third part of the 

 operations. The more quickly each block was planted, the 



