ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 59 



of Malcolm Canmore, who died in the year 1093. 

 And there is no good reason to believe that 

 writing was practised at a much earlier period in 

 the country. The scanty notices of partially- 

 informed foreigners, or the still more fallacious 

 native traditions, are therefore our only guides 

 to the civil history of the earlier period/ And 

 with regard to * laws for which no authority 

 exists so old as the reign of Robert I.' (1306- 

 1329), it remarks that * most of the later 

 manuscript compilations have a large collection 

 of laws under the title of Leges Foresfarum. But 

 these are always of a most miscellaneous descrip- 

 tion, and contain only a few that are properly 

 forest laws and regulations. All of that descrip- 

 tion are here given. They are for the most part 

 chapters of well-known English statutes, and it 

 may be thought their chief value here, to show 

 how readily the Scotch lawyers, even of a later 

 age, adopted the provisions of the English 

 legislature, while nevertheless they preferred 

 pecuniary penalties and mitigated the savage 

 spirit of the forest law of England/ 



Sir John Skene, in his Regiam Majestatem : 

 Auld Lawes and Constitutions of Scotland^ 



