1 8 AFFORESTATION IN SCOTLAND. 



but experience has shown that, except in small, isolated woods, 

 the damage is apt to be confined to a very few trees. The 

 admission of deer and grazing stock into German and French 

 forests is a recognised practice ; but while, abroad, deer are 

 actually fenced into the woods, in Scotland they will have the 

 whole of the high ground to resort to, coming into the woods 

 only at times of storm and snow. The greatest amount of 

 damage is done to trees immediately around the open spaces to 

 which the deer resort, but there the individual trees can quite 

 inexpensively be protected. In dense young woods the damage 

 done is small. 



Communal rights of grazing are often exercised in 

 continental forests from the very earliest years of the re- 

 stocking of felled areas, and considerable damage is then done 

 to the young crops ; but under the scheme here proposed, a 

 period of enclosure from grazing by stock or deer is provided. 



The exact age at which it may be possible to admit sheep or 

 deer into woods is a matter upon which there are very divergent 

 views, — founded on experience of very diverse conditions. By 

 limiting the elevation above sea-level in the first block to not more 

 than 800 feet ; by adopting the Belgian method of planting on turf 

 in peaty ground ; by carefully draining wet ground; and perhaps 

 by the substitution of Menzies spruce for the Norwegian species, 

 it should be possible to admit deer to plantations between the 

 fifteenth and twentieth years. No doubt there are many who 

 can give examples where plantations twenty-five, thirty and thirty- 

 five years old have been destroyed, and many such plantations 

 have been examined by the writers. It will usually be found, 

 however, that these plantations were on ground where no 

 other woods existed, and were, for the most part, merely shelter- 

 belts of a very few acres in extent. On the other hand, examples 

 can be studied in (Jlen Mor at Glen Moriston, Dell, Inver- 

 garry, and Loch Unagan, where deer have been admitted into 

 plantations before the fifteenth year without much damage being 

 done. 



Instances can be given in other parts of Scotland where the 

 wintering capability of a forest has been greatly increased by a 

 very few hundred acres of planting ; and the well-known examples 

 of the Boblainy and Farley deer forests which, with 6000 acre's 

 of wood and 4000 acres of hill ground, annually yield fifty 

 stags, show the value for deer of old mixed woods. But it must 



