42 THE LAST WOLF IN SCOTLAND 



star of Bethlehem should be wholesome food for human 

 beings, and that rabbits evidently found that the foliage 

 disagreed with them ; but this is the case with several 

 of the Liliacece. In China the bulbs of the tiger lily, 

 in Japan those of Lilium auratum, are prized as 

 nourishing food, but rabbits don't meddle with the 

 stems and leaves. I have long intended to sample the 

 bulbs of star of Bethlehem, but am uncertain as to the 

 proper season for lifting them. 



XI 



It requires but moderate acquaintance with the 



social history of these islands to realise the 

 The Last J 



wolf in immense advance in comfort, security, and 



} an the decencies of life which was achieved in 

 the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ; 

 and in no part of the realm have advances been so 

 rapid and changes so sweeping as in Scotland. Yet 

 even there, on the whole, they have been more evolu- 

 tionary than revolutionary. Laws have been suffered 

 to lapse into disuse without formal repeal, with the 

 result that at the beginning of the twentieth century 

 the Statute Book was still loaded with a vast number 

 of enactments which neither hurt nor benefited any- 

 body, by reason that they were wholly inoperative, but 

 which it was thought expedient to put officially to 

 death by a kind of spring-cleaning termed Statute Law 

 Revision. Hence in the session, I think, of 1903 we 

 were reminded of the continuity of our national 

 chronicle by one such holocaust of ancient Scottish 

 laws. A bill was prepared in the Scottish Office 



