PREFACE. 



speak with absolute correctness, I ought not to style 

 myself the "author" of this book; "the collector of 

 these notes " would be the better term, as the real 

 authors are the forest owners and renters themselves, 

 with nearly every one of whom I have been more 

 or less in correspondence. At the present moment 

 there are just 130 deer forests in Scotland, covering 

 2 >55 2 . 383 acres, and of each one I hope to say 

 something reliable, for the information in all cases 

 has been derived from the very best of sources, 

 viz., either from owner or renter, and further afield 

 I have not sought to go, having received an 

 early caution from a forest owner, who wrote me 

 to the following effect when kindly sending the 

 particulars of his own forest : "You should be careful 

 about keepers' and gillies' information ; one man near 

 here I found adding in a newspaper report two stone 

 and some points to a stag killed on his ground, and he 

 laughed and said it was necessary 'to make things 

 good for the papers.' Some stalkers about here also 

 allow a stone if a stag is left on the hill for a night." 



